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BSD Operating Systems

FreeBSD 5.0 Available 372

Posted by CmdrTaco from the still-has-a-better-mascot dept.
Vegard writes "Although not yet officially announced, the 5.0 version of FreeBSD is beginning to appear on the FreeBSD FTP site and mirrors world wide." Congrats to the developers. Update: 01/19 17:44 GMT by T : Some more detail -- Dan writes "Scott Long of FreeBSD Release Engineering team has officially announced the availability of FreeBSD 5.0 release. Improvements include second generation UFS filesystem, GEOM, the extensible and flexible storage framework, DEVFS, the device virtual filesystem, Bluetooth, ACPI, CardBus, IEEE 1394 and many more! FreeBSD is also available on 64-bit sparc64 and ia64 platforms."
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FreeBSD 5.0 Available More

FreeBSD 5.0 Available

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  • Release Notes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Squeezer ( 132342 ) <awilliam@[ ]h.state.ms.us ['mda' in gap]> on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:08AM (#5112865) Homepage
    If you want to see what is new in FreeBSD 5.0 then click to view the release notes.

    http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.0R/relnotes.html [freebsd.org]

    • Re:Release Notes (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      SMPng along with the TrustedBSD stuff are probably the most important changes, but I'm REALLY happy of the POSIX compliance changes.

      When companies realize the benefits fo the BSD license this will takeover the world.

      • Re:Release Notes (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Sunday January 19, 2003 @02:35PM (#5113956)
        Some companies [apple.com] are already well aware of the benefits of the BSD license. The net result? One company [apple.com] is now the largest single producer of UNIX operating systems in the world, measured in terms of number of units shipped per year.

        The BSD license is a beautiful thing. Software that carries the BSD license can really, seriously, no-shit change the world for the better.

    • Early Adopter's Guide (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19, 2003 @12:48PM (#5113419)
      And if you want to read some thoughts on whether you should upgrade, then click to view the early adopter's guide.

      http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.0R/early-adopter .html [freebsd.org]

      Summary:

      "While FreeBSD 5.0 contains a number of new and exciting features, it may not be suitable for all users at this time. In this document, we presented some background on release engineering, some of the more notable new features of the 5.X series, and some drawbacks to early adoption. We also presented some future plans for the 4-STABLE development branch and some tips on upgrading for early adopters."

    • MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ChrisCampbell47 ( 181542 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @02:03PM (#5113787)
      Absolutely the only +5 comments on this thread should be people excoriating CmdrTaco for A) posting before PGP-signed announcement and B) linking directly to the master ftp site instead of the web page listing the mirrors.

      I mean, I expect this from one of the junior "editors", but Cmdr Taco? Come on.

    • Re:Release Notes (Score:4, Informative)

      by micsaund ( 12591 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @02:28PM (#5113914) Homepage
      I am consistently impressed by the FreeBSD team's ability to document their products. Whenever I need info from RedHat, for example, it ranges from a hassle to a PITA. The FreeBSD team maintains an entire, several hundred page handbook as well as east-to-find release notes, descriptions of their processes, FAQs, and much more.

      I realize that many of the "hardcore haxx0rz" don't see the value in this documentation, but the fact that it exists and is maintained shows the professionalism and dedication the FreeBSD team has (which results in a damned fine OS!)
      • to use the manufacturers handbook as the definitive guide. Imagine that, a supplied manual that actually tells you everything you need to know.

        One Handbook, One OS, One happy customer

  • Oh, hooray (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RPoet ( 20693 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:10AM (#5112880) Journal
    The release hasn't been announced, which would mean it hasn't reached the mirrors yet, which would mean they need the master FTP server to be up and running. How very convenient of Slashdot to link directly to the master FTP server before this has happened! This is sabotage.

  • Nice linking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Openadvocate ( 573093 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:15AM (#5112896)
    Now why would you link directly to a FTP server? We all know that a lot of people will begin to download a +600MB ISO file and that no single FTP server would be able to handle the Slashdot crowd. Now I hope that the people here that wants to download FreeBSD has the brain power to check the mirror list first, if they not already has a favorite mirror. Still the proper thing to do, would be to link to the mirror list directly.
    Also by using the mirror list, our US friends wouldn't have to download from a server in Denmark, but maybe a local one instead. Oh, well I guess that's just me, but I really think that in the lengthly, time consuming screening process of each article, someone would show a bit of responibility, knowing the effects, posting a article with links have.
    • I guess since *BSD is dying the /. editors saw no harm in linking :-))
    • Open source software which is featured on a /. story should link to the Freshmeat entry for the program.

      This would allow folks to find out what a program is, and then the mirror list, saving the author's homepage some the /. effect.
      • Open source software which is featured on a /. story should link to the Freshmeat entry for the program. This would allow folks to find out what a program is...

        If you don't know what FreeBSD is by now, no amount of Freshmeating will help you.

        This is, after all, bsd.slashdot.org.
      • FreeBSD has their own announcement channels. If you look at Freshmeat, they're not even current anyway, they still have 4.5.

        FreeBSD servers can take the load. Remember that ftp.cdrom.com was a SINGLE FreeBSD server for years, and hosted FreeBSD .isos and a couple Linux distros (I think they had slack and RedHat .isos as well). The problem is not that their wasn't a good precedure to announce this, but that procedure wasn't followed.

    • Re:Nice linking (Score:5, Funny)

      by b0r1s ( 170449 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @12:12PM (#5113272) Homepage
      Now why would you link directly to a FTP server? We all know that a lot of people will begin to download a +600MB ISO file and that no single FTP server would be able to handle the Slashdot crowd..

      Correction: No single Linux server would be able to handle the Slashdot crowd. A single FreeBSD server can do it easily.

      http://www.bsdtoday.com/2000/October/News296.html [bsdtoday.com].

      This is from 2 years ago, many advancements have been made, particularly to the hardware and network stack, so assume that these numbers are on the very low end of estimates.

      "We're very pleased to have servers that we built, running the FreeBSD operating system, set new milestones like this. It really shows just how well our large servers can perform in real-world situations using freely available software", Greenman said. "Equally impressive is the server's stability. It was pumping out upwards of 300 million bits per second to over 3000 users at a time for the past several days without a glitch and has been operating crash-free under similarly high loads for nearly two months now."


      • Correction: No single Linux server would be able to handle the Slashdot crowd. A single FreeBSD server can do it easily.

        For business it doesn't matter single or cluster. For business the keyword is scalability.

        Linux have much more than BSD ways for scaling up. BSD was designed to work as a single server (with single CPU). Besides, I wanna ask: how is BSD good with journalling and RAIDs on that sinlge server?

        • Re:Nice linking (Score:2, Informative)

          by Beetjebrak ( 545819 )
          From my experience (FreeBSD fileservers under pretty heavy punishment from a publishing house internally) I can say RAID works like a charm using vinum. Of course it supports hardware RAID controllers, but those should perform roughly equally under every OS.

          Journaling, well, I don't think one could call SoftUpdates actual journalling.. but it works like a charm really. It's fast, reliable and there are no lenghty fsck's for when the server ever needs to reboot (security patches).

          The servers I speak of have been running steadily for well over a year without any unplanned reboots. Of course I reboot them when security patches demand it, but those are few and many don't even require rebooting. I also had a disk blow up on me some months ago. Vinum did what it had to do and the box just kept on running. (Whose slogan is that again?? I never had this kind of 'luck' with NT-servers. RAID would work, but the box would go south together with a disk fairly soon)

          As for the single CPU-bit: I don't have any first-hand experience with SMP-systems but I hear 5.0 has some really great support for SMP in its kernel quite on par with Solaris. Fileserving witn Samba, Netatalk and NFS isn't exactly taxing on the CPU, so I'd like to hear some experiences from people who do run renderfarms on FreeBSD.
          • From the efficient screensaver dept.: POKE 53281,0:POKE 53280,0

            So when is FreeBSD being ported to the C-64? Or would that actually be a NetBSD port...
          • I never had the chance to try FreeBSD SMP support yet, but I strongly doubt that it is as good as Solaris'.

            Solaris is running on systems with lots of processors (as in several hundreds) for years. Even if SMPng adresses such huge systems at all (which I simply don't know), don't underestimate the value of years of debugging and tuning, not to mention controling both the hardware and software part at once.

            That said, I'm just configuring my (single CPU) Ultra5 to netboot FreeBSD 5.0 :)

        • Linux have much more than BSD ways for scaling up. BSD was designed to work as a single server (with single CPU). Besides, I wanna ask: how is BSD good with journalling and RAIDs on that sinlge server?

          Journalling is a hack to an already poor filesystem. Well designed filesystems, such as UFS, support other means to ensure correctness. UFS and UFS2 support softupdates, which ensure consistency. Journalling, such as that in ext3, are hacks added to fix design problems.

          As for scaling: the single advantage of linux over bsd in scaling is the introduction of Mosix clustering for Linux, and the newer SMP code brought by IBM to the Linux project. The fact that BSD was used by projects such as Yahoo and Hotmail should suggest that it does scale quite well.

          • Re:Nice linking (Score:3, Insightful)

            by axxackall ( 579006 )
            if journalling is just a hack, why IBMuse it instead of UFS? I don't believe that journalling is just a hack. It's reliability has been proven by several new-designed open source and commercial filesystems: ReiserFS, XFS, JFS.

            As for Ext3, it's been improved, not hacked. And counting its age it's already reliable. Compare to UFS back to the same age.

            As for scaling, I doubt that IBM made a mistake choosing Linux as a replacement for AIX. Otherwise, why IBM did not do the same or similar step as Apple did? The answer is simple: IBM doesn't trust to non-scalable design of BSD.

            Recent news from SGI (Linux on new SGI servers) just proves it.

      • Re:Nice linking (Score:3, Interesting)

        by wass ( 72082 )
        That said, can someone knowledgeable offer some sort of explanation for why FreeBSD is able to support a higher network load than linux? Is the above link a real unbiased comparison?Does it have anything to do with linux being monolithic kernel? I thought Linux used the FreeBSD TCP/IP stack too, so wouldn't this seem to put them on roughly equal par? Are there any technical reasons the Linux kernel hackers haven't been able to catch up to FreeBSD's abilities?

        Sorry to open the door for scores of both Linux and *BSD trolls to jump in with stupid responses like "myOS rox, yourOS sux", but hopefully there will be at least one level-headed response. Thx.

        • Re:Nice linking (Score:5, Informative)

          by ianezz ( 31449 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @01:57PM (#5113759) Homepage
          I thought Linux used the FreeBSD TCP/IP stack too

          No, Linux has its own implementation of networking code rewritten from scratch.

          This is why problems affecting the traditional *BSD implementation of TCP/IP (which is used pratically everywhere except for Linux) don't usually affect Linux. Of course, the opposite is also true.

          That said, the FreeBSD kernel is known (or, at least, it has been known) for being able to handle high load/low resource conditions far more gracefully than Linux.

        • Re:Nice linking (Score:5, Interesting)

          by cant_get_a_good_nick ( 172131 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @02:47PM (#5114020)
          Does it have anything to do with linux being monolithic kernel?

          FreeBSD is also built on a monolithic kernel. Monolithic kernels tend to be as fast or (usually) faster than MicroKernels - no message passing, everything is essentially 'global' and readily accessed. As far as monolithic goes, you might be having a brainfart about MacOS X, which is a MicroKernel (Mach) with a kernel level BSD blob (a mix of Free and NetBSD).

          FreeBSD has always been able to withstand higher loads than Linux. Just been around longer. It has a more mature VM that can take the load, and has a more mature TCP/IP stack.

          Not a troll, I just FreeBSD has stability advantages over Linux under high load. Linux has a lot of other advantages, take your pick. I don't know why folks get into religious arguments and start yelling over what free UNIX you should use. "You know if you use THIS free, stable, x86 UNIX-like system with a lot of application support, you're real cool, but if you use THAT free, stable, x86 UNIX-like system with a lot of application support, you're a total asshole man." I must be clueless; I just don't get it.

  • Hurrah for the BSD Team (Score:2, Interesting)

    by puto ( 533470 )
    I use Linux and Free BSD. BSD was my first real delve into the Unix fold. A damn fine server OS and used by more people than most would think. SMP at its finest IMHO.

    The team takes its time with updates, does them right the first time and make it a true pleasure to work with.

    Kudos guys.

    Puto
    • SMP at its finest has yet to be seen, hopefully 5.0 will make your statement true, but with 4.x and below, we've had to switch to Linux for our databases because the threading wasn't managed by the kernel, and thus you can't have more than one thread from the same process on multiple processors at once. Pretty much useless for some applications, might as well just have 1 cpu.

  • A few mirros (Score:5, Informative)

    by KAMiKAZOW ( 455500 ) <kamikazow@hotmail.com> on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:16AM (#5112902)
    The ISOs are not yet on all mirrors, but at least on the following servers:
    ftp://ftp.uk.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO -IMAGES-i3 86/5.0/
    ftp://ftp2.uk.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO -IMAGES-i 386/5.0/
    ftp://ftp5.uk.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/IS O-IMAGES-i 386/5.0/
    ftp://ftp6.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-I MAGES-i386 /5.0/
    ftp://ftp14.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMA GES-i38 6/5.0/

    Please look also if the files appeared on the other mirrors.

    • Re:A few mirros (Score:5, Insightful)

      by __past__ ( 542467 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:06AM (#5113032)
      Please look also if the files appeared on the other mirrors.
      No, please don't. Wait until it's released. The ISOs may still change without notice, destroy your computer and piss in your fish bowl. Say with me: These files do not contain a released FreeBSD version.

      And, of course, instead of downloading ISO images, consider using CVSup to save time and bandwidth. Or at least don't download all ISOs - you don't need all packages, and installing the stuff you want from the network works without any problems.

  • I managed to get a free copy of freebsd thanks to my status as a journalist, however I was sadly disappointed by this product.

    I attempted to install freebsd on my IBM laptop, however I discovered my particular model was not compatible (which is odd, since it runs win2k just fine, which has many BSD elements in it). I decided to try it on my p4 system which I use for games occasionally. Unfortunately I discovered that BSD refused to be installed on my NTFS partition, and I was required to create a new partition! I have never had this problem with windows before and was baffled at the amount of work BSD forces one to take on just to get it installed! I decided to abort my attempt at reviewing BSD since it didn't seem to work on any of the systems I had! Furthermore I discovered that not only does Freebsd not run any new games, it doesn't even run Microsoft office, the standard office program! A truly terrible computer product!

    I give FreeBSD 1/10

    • Re:My review of FreeBSD 5.0 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BusterB ( 10791 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:29AM (#5112928)
      If you want NTFS support for FreeBSD, simply find a source of unencumbered documentation on that FS and let the developers know where you found it. Having trouble? I thought so!

      NTFS is intentionally underdocumented, so most attempts to support it in other OS's have been mostly reverse-engineering attempts. You could sign an NDA, but probably wouldn't be able to write free code with that information. Do not blame FreeBSD for not supporting undocumented features of another OS.

      If you have an example of any non-Microsoft OS that can install on NTFS, please prove me wrong!
      • The parent post was a joke; he was not making fun of FreeBSD. He was making fun of idiot journalists who don't have a clue how things really work, and expect idiot things like support for NTFS.

        Of course, your proably have to deal with enough idiot users who demand that kind of BS that it actually looks serious to you.

        - Sam

      • Re:My review of FreeBSD 5.0 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @12:04PM (#5113238)
        Uhh first off, I think the parent post is joking, making fun of moronic journalists. Secondly, pages 700-777 of "Inside Microsoft Windows 2000" (an MS book) provide a very good starter NTFS reference. Also the MSDN section on NTFS (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url =/library/en-us/fileio/base/ntfs.asp) is another place to look. Finally, NTFSDOS is a third party, commercial, tool that allows DOS to access NT drives.

    • Re:My review of FreeBSD 5.0 (Score:4, Funny)

      by debaere ( 94918 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @12:17PM (#5113295)
      " ... it doesn't even run Microsoft office, the standard office program! A truly terrible computer product!"

      You are right, MS Office is truly a terrible computer product :)

  • great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:23AM (#5112915) Homepage
    Slashdot jumps the gun yet again! And I was planning to sneak download FreeBSD 5.0 while nobody knows about it. Now my download is going to choke. My evil plans are foiled yet again! Curses Taco!

    • Re:great... (Score:2, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      Your download should work fine if you use one of the mirrors. I'm getting 350KB/s from ftp://ftp5.uk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/...

  • Mirrors (Score:5, Informative)

    by hashinclude ( 192717 ) <slashdot@nOspAm.hashinclude.com> on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:25AM (#5112920) Homepage

    Can't /. editors *PLEASE* *PLEASE* list mirrors rather than freebsd ftp directly??

    Anyway .. here is a list of mirrors [freebsdmirrors.org] of FreeBSD [freebsd.org]. Don't know which works though. A mirror of the mirrors is available here [virtualave.net] Its *very* badly formatted though. Oh.. and suppress popups, will you please?

    The stupid /. "postercomment" compression filter won;t let me post a list of mirrors ...

    And to pre-empt stupid /. comments about Mirrors and Soviet Russia --

    In Soviet Russia, FreeBSD Mirrors YOU

    • Re:Mirrors (Score:4, Funny)

      by BitHive ( 578094 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @04:12PM (#5114396) Homepage
      They'll never link to your mirrors list--and here's why:

      You notice how with all this talk of the "slashdot effect", we're all still able to browse slashdot? Do you ever have problems loading slashdot and try a slashdot mirror? Of course not. This is because slashdot is cool and has "mad bandwidth". The attitude of the editors is simple: if FreeBSD was cool enough, they would have mad bandwidth too, and linking to their master FTP server wouldn't be a problem. Since they aren't, they don't, so hence we don't give a shit.

      I hope this has been helpful.

  • I believe, (Score:5, Funny)

    by jcoy42 ( 412359 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:27AM (#5112925) Homepage Journal
    Mr CmdrTaco, that you have just pee'd in their wheaties.

  • Free BSD for ALPHA anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by UpLateDrinkingCoffee ( 605179 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:30AM (#5112933)
    Just wondering, what is the state of FreeBSD for alpha? I have a monster Digital Personal Workstation (600au) that I picked up in a dot com like fire sale... seems like alpha support for linux is waning a bit so I was wondering where the FreeBSD camp stands in this area?

    I've got debian on there right now if anyone was wondering...

    • I'm running RELENG_4 on my AlphaStation at home, so there's at least SOME support with current releases.
    • It works pretty well. I know quite a few former redhat users who have switched to free/net BSD on Alpha. I've run it myself on EV6 hardware, They've done some good work. If you'
      re concerned about linux/alpha support check out debian. well supported and stable.

      Peter

  • Hasnt this happened before (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:38AM (#5112953)
    Time and time again everyone says DO NOT LINK DIRECTLY to the main site, link to a mirror list. The fact that you still linked to the primary site and even said it has not been announced makes me wonder do you ever fucking read our comments. You guys need to develop a checklist before you post news items. 1. is it a dupe? 2. did i spell check this? 3. if there's a link to an product that was just released did i post the mirror link instead of the primary link? 4. And finally ask yourself this question, is this news the slashdot crowd really cares about? (*note this does not pertain to the current story)
    • The FreeBSD project learned it's lesson on this long ago. ftp.freebsd.org is now just a tier-1 mirror, just like any other tier-1 mirror. However, the master site is not publically available.

      Also, if you guys want the REAL release announcement, go here [freebsd.org]

  • RC3 was a good experience (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:38AM (#5112956)
    Good to hear the final 5.0 release is out. I installed FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 on my Pentium 100MHz with 32MB of RAM and I must say I'm really impressed how well the system performs. I'm a console freak so I try to do everything I need to do using console programs. It's been a really great thing to notice all of the utilities I have needed are also available as console programs.
    I use "slrn" to read the Usenet news, "lynx"/"links" to surf the web, "mutt" to read/send e-mail, "mpg123" to listen to music/internet radiostations. Truly great experience and imagine it works _really_ smoothly and fast on computer which was bought in 1995. I am impressed and a happy FreeBSD user!
    • I used to be the same way (only w/Linux). I thought there was a sort-of charm in it, I guess.

      Then I realized that for $200 I could get a machine immensly faster than my $3000 1995 machine (a P120 w/32MB). And when I get the extra power and memory/HD space, I found ways to make good use of it pretty quick.

      So, next time your power supply or HD fizzles out, don't spend $40-60 dollars replacing them? Take the opportunity to upgrade. The console still works fine on these machines, I promise.

  • Announcement. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by saintlupus ( 227599 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:44AM (#5112965)
    Although not yet officially announced

    Uh, maybe there's a reason? Like they want to finish pushing everything out to the mirrors?

    --saint

  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by huhmz ( 216967 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:53AM (#5112992)
    Has been available for a couple of days now, since the mirrors are gonna get hit bad now i figure i could contribute with my unofficial 100Mbit mirror.
    ISOs for i386 here:
    mirror [130.237.77.139]

    Dont forget to check the md5sums, I could be an evil blackhat after all. Enjoy.

  • FreeBSD 5.0 NOT released (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:00AM (#5113018) Homepage
    Quote from the 4.6 (non)release story [slashdot.org]:
    Murray Stokely writes "We have gone over this for the past 2 releases now. I thought I had made it clear that you were not to publish information about FreeBSD being released until you saw a signed PGP message from one of the release engineers. Are you trying to help the spread of trojanned copies of FreeBSD? The release is not ready yet, and will not be until the front page of FreeBSD.org is updated and a PGP signed announcement message is posted to announce@FreeBSD.org."

    Unless the rules have changed, slashdot screwed up again.
    • from the freeBSD Mail archives about the 4.5 announcement [freebsd.org]:

      On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 01:43:19PM -0800, Jordan Hubbard wrote:
      > Not only am I quoted as somehow having announced it (EH?), but
      > slashdot has just announced the availability of FreeBSD 4.5. I've
      > already posted a correction as part of the ensuing thread, but just a
      > heads-up in case you guys start getting questions about it. From
      > everything I can see, somebody recycled my 4.4 announcement or
      > something and the slashdot editors didn't even bother to verify it.

      And this wonderful newsflash is brought to us only a few weeks after the FIRST "Official" CD release of FreeBSD was pre-announced[1]. I immediately followed that up with a story about the 47th "Official" CD release of FreeBSD to be released on January 26, but they never posted it. The editing at Slashdot has been a joke recently. It is very clear that the posters don't even follow the links in the submissions. I will send some pointers to the editors to make sure this never happens again, as I'm sure many readers have already done.
      - Murray

      i think he is gonna get very angry this time also :))

    • Re:FreeBSD 5.0 NOT released (Score:5, Funny)

      by rsidd ( 6328 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @01:01PM (#5113464)
      In that story, FreeBSD release engineer Bruce A. Mah comments [slashdot.org]:

      This wouldn't be such a big deal except we had a very similar situation in 4.5 with someone posting a bogus release announcement to Slashdot (and having it slip past the editors). I really hope there isn't a third time.

      Well, here's hoping there isn't a fourth, Bruce....

  • Early annoucements (Score:5, Insightful)

    by __past__ ( 542467 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:01AM (#5113019)
    I really wonder whether CmdrTaco is just too stupid to learn that a FreeBSD version is released when the release is announced by the release managment team and not when some files appear on some FTP sites, or if this has become some weird kind of personal vendetta or insider joke. Not only that he fucked up for every single release for some years now, they even started to announce release candidates early recently.

    Despite being idiotic, this behaviour is really harmful. FreeBSD takes care to let their mirrors prepare for the traffic peak when a new version is released. The early "announcements" on slashdot of course mean that the people managing the mirrors - voluntarily, people not only FreeBSD but lots of free software projects depend on - don't have this time to prepare, and might get major problems, which in turn might mean that they decide not to support FreeBSD and other projects by providing bandwidth for free any more.

    Unless this is some funky plan of VA Software or whatever their name is this week to push SourceForge, it would be really nice if slashdot could just stop damaging the Free Software infrastructure.

    • Re:Early annoucements (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tim C ( 15259 )
      They don't just do it to FreeBSD - any time any new version of a major piece of OS software is spotted on an ftp server somewhere, this happens. It has happened (iirc) for X, KDE, Gnome, Mandrake, etc.

      Sure, the maintainers could restrict access until everything is ready, then announce the release and open up the servers. But why should they have to?

      Jesus people, it only takes a little common courtesy to wait until the announcement is made. Is it really that important to scoop even the project's own site?

  • Keeping it a secret. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vskjefst ( 455144 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:03AM (#5113025) Homepage
    If you don't want the public to spot your releases until they are officially announced, then you should keep them hidden. Upload your files with restricted access to the master ftp and all mirrors, issue the press release, THEN make the files public.
    • I wish I hadn't used up all my mod points last week. You deserve a +5 at least. I guess bitching about Slashdot is easier than learning about chmod.
    • If you don't want the public to spot your releases until they are officially announced, then you should keep them hidden. Upload your files with restricted access to the master ftp and all mirrors, issue the press release, THEN make the files public.

      Thank you for that.

      I just have one thing to add here;

      I've been reading all these comments from the BSD crowd here in awe. I mean, all this hostility over... what? An announcement that linked to a PGP-signed release announcement. The ISOs are on the servers. The time to rejoice is nigh! But no rejoicing from this crowd. No "Awesome new features ... I can't wait to test this on my home rig ... " postings; just adolescent whining.

      Seriously folks; you respect the FreeBSD development team, right? You respect their programming talents and their combined decades of computer, operating system, and networking experience, right? Do you really take them to be this naive? Would you really have us believe that they would roll release-grade, Version 5.0 (no RC-*) CD images and make them public when they weren't ready? Do you really think they'll be at all SURPRISED when people start to notice, download, and tell all their friends about this release? Don't you think they have a solid, stable (FreeBSD) FTP server pumping out these requests, properly configured with reasonable user/transfer limits in place, and QoS on their upstream bandwidth? If you're that unsure of FreeBSD's ability to handle high loads - why are you downloading it?

      It was inevietable that this would find its way to Slashdot. That's how Slashdot works. It's been seen time and time again. KDE, GNOME, Linux Kernel, XFree86, [Open|Star]Office, or any other project of significant magnitude (and interest) - the release files are made publically available, someone notices and the Slashdot editors respond to the influx of "It's here! It's here!" submissions. As a result, Slashdot is very often the first place to find out about new software updates. Is this really 'news' to anyone?

      Sure, they could link to the mirrors, but not doing so isn't by any means a conspiracy, it may be poor taste, but it's the same taste that links directly to kernel.org when a new Linux kernel is released. It's been pointed out to me more times than I can count that Slashdot readers are "IT professionals" - so stop talking about being professional and act like it. Download reaponsibly; use a mirror.

      I'll download a mini-ISO later, when the tide has ebbed, and install it at my leisure.

      </RANT>

      • Re:Keeping it a secret. (Score:5, Informative)

        by shlong ( 121504 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @07:45PM (#5115448) Homepage
        As the release manager for FreeBSD 5.0, this situation was disappointing for me because:
        1. I had formed an agreement with Hemos last week that Slashdot would only accept submissions from the release engineering team and/or PR team for this.
        2. The story that did get posted was crap. It didn't have a link to an announcement, release notes, or anything.

        On all, it was very unprofessional of the Slashdot editorial team.

  • FreeBSD Mirror sitres (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bihoy ( 100694 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:08AM (#5113040)
    When FreeBSD 5.0 is officially released you should be able to get it from one of the FTP sites in the official list.

    FTP Sites [freebsd.org]

  • Mirroring with peer2peer networks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by root 66 ( 72128 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:08AM (#5113043)
    Would be great if those who already completed their downloads of the iso files could share them using their favourite peer2peer program to take some load off of the FTP servers.
    • This is a good idea, and something I tend to do with everything I get from the 'net, from ISOs to drivers via Kazaa. I think quite a few other people do as well. When UT2003 demo was released, I saturated my cable modem getting it from Kazaa, but couldn't even connect to the 'official' download servers. Perhaps next time some numpty decides to slashdot an ftp server people should search p2p systems before clicking on the 'let's kill out favourite OS's ftp server' button...
    • Apparently P2P newtworks do not support
      free softwate much. I could not find neither
      FreeBSD or Linux images on Gnutella.

      • Since when can anything be found on Gnutella?
      • I've got a friend who is a hardcore P2P pirate. If he is any indication, then you won't find any free software because it's legally free. They don't want legally free, they want to steal. They judge the value of software on its retail price.

        Quote one: "No I don't want to borrow your Linux CD, it's free you idiot! Why would I want it if it's free?"

        Quote two: "What do you mean you don't want a ripped Photoshop? It's $500 in stores you idiot!"

        p.s. Yeah, we really are friends. I call him an idiot just as often. It's how we show each other that we care.
    • OK, I've put one of ISO images to Gnutella:

      FreeBSD-5.0-RELEASE-i386-miniinst.iso
      urn:sha1: AEFB3UPCPHN4L4YVLDUOU2PBTMAS7XS3

  • Oh yeah ! (Score:4, Funny)

    by SILIZIUMM ( 241333 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:41AM (#5113165) Homepage

    And I just downloaded the 4 ISOs of 4.7 yesterday !

    But it's not a problem since many people said that it was better for me to stick with 4.7 and then switch to 5.1 or 5.2. Not a problem too since I'M on cable and I downloaded theses ISOs at 300+ kb/s :)

    • If you have a good connection you can do an HTTP/FTP/NFS install . You'll save bandwitdth and CD's. Also, you can do a decent install with just one CD.

      I've installed 5.0 this morning(GMT) with no problems (it performs as fine as 4.x!). I think is stable enough for a Workstation (remember, 3 RC's behind), so I recommend you to install this version. Remember that a 4.x-5.x transition will not be easy.

    • Re:Oh yeah ! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by b0r1s ( 170449 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @12:32PM (#5113361) Homepage
      But it's not a problem since many people said that it was better for me to stick with 4.7 and then switch to 5.1 or 5.2. Not a problem too since I'M on cable and I downloaded theses ISOs at 300+ kb/s :)

      This is a valid point that I haven't yet seen addressed: which is better for the average user, 4.7 or 5.0?

      There have been many, many changes to the code in 5.0, and there are bound to be more than a few bugs. If you're running a site that can have zero downtime, and you don't have redundant servers, don't bother switching to 5.0, it's simply not ready yet.

      If you're a home user, don't mind a few make buildworld, make buildkernel, make installkernel, make installworld sequences, upgrade. There's enough new that you'll enjoy it, and there's enough stability that you probably won't notice the infrequent bugs.

      If you're asking yourself "Why should I upgrade when everyone says there's going to be bugs?", the answer is simple: the bugs can't be found without testers, so everyone on the team needs your help to find them quickly. If you encounter a bug, file a PR, and maybe even try publicizing it on a mailing list. Letting the developers know that bugs exist is the first step in getting bug-free code.

    • 4.8 will be out in a month. But don't tell Slashdot!

  • Its slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:51AM (#5113192)
    I knew this would happen, so i uploaded it to my oc-255 server, enjoy! [ottawa.on.ca]

  • I thought... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...*BSD is dead? Oh wait, it's just their ftp server...
  • It would be kind of funny/ironic if the FreeBSD team deliberately put out ISOs with a fault or flaw in them, just to put off people who link to and download them before the proper release message.

    Doubtful, but if they get annoyed at this, look out for it next time.

  • I wonder if slashdot does this on purpose to FBSD (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Seems something like this happens EVERY release of FreeBSD. While once or twice might be excuseable, *every time* HAS to make one wonder if Slashdot is doing this on purpose to harm FreeBSD.

    Makes me also wonder if an undocumented "feature" of Slashdot is the posting of the FreeBSD is Dying post, as well.

    What's the problem? That FreeBSD is a cometitor of Linux? Is that why Slashdot pulls this stunt time and time again? What other project does Slashdot do this to AT ALL, let alone every time.

    I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but when something is done time and time again, anyone with a brain would find the "we made a mistake, sorry" line very unbelievable as the behavior is repeated time and time again.

    Maybe we'll see another posting about a troll getting sued....and it will be Slashdot getting sued by FreeBSD!

    Grow up and act responsibly, please. Don't do things that are harmful to others and their hard open source work, please. Thank you (I hope).

  • BitTorrent Links for 5.0 release (Score:4, Informative)

    by mxs ( 42717 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @01:27PM (#5113602)

    Since Slashdot had to link to the FTP, maybe this will help lighten the stress on the mirrors : http://tacos.sus.mcgill.ca/~hperes/BT_BSD5.0/ [mcgill.ca] has BitTorrent files for the i386 release ISOs.

    BitTorrent is a peer to peer fileswarmer. It's Free and Open Source, and comes in flavors for *ix, win32, and MacOS X. Clients are avaiable @ http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/ [bitconjurer.org] ...

    Once you have finished the download, please keep the window open as long as possible so that others can get the file as well. Thanks !

    The download might be a little slow at the beginning, but as more and more people hop on, it should get really fast. Just give it a couple of minutes.

  • Can someone in the know post a quick rundown on the differences between UFS1 and UFS2? I've tried searching on the web, news archives, the freebsd site, etc, and the most I can come up with is that it supports file system sizes larger than 1TB, and it has native EA support. Specifically I'm wondering if it supports files larger than 2GB now, and what sort of performance changes they've made (these are hinted at all over the place but not explicitly listed). I saw mention of an actual list of expected differences from Kirk McKusick but no link.. a link to that would probably be sufficient to answer any of these questions :)

    Anyone have any experience using UFS2? Would you recommend it? I'm probably going to wait for 5.1 or 5.2-RELEASE and upgrade my media server. I'd like to have large file support for obvious reasons.

    • Re:UFS1 vs UFS2 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Istealmymusic ( 573079 )
      I'm installing 5.0 as I write this and here is what sysinstall says about UFS2: To make use of UFS2, press '2' on a UFS file system to toggle the on-disk format revision. UFS2 provides native support for extended attributes, larger disk sizes, and forward compatibility with new on-disk high performance directory layout and storage extents. However, UFS2 is unsupported on versions of FreeBSD prior to 5.0 so it is not recommended for environments requiring backward compatibility. Also, UFS2 is not currently recommended as a root file system format for non-64-bit platforms due to incrased size of the boot loader; special local configuration is required to boot UFS2 as a root file system on i386 and PC98. Looks pretty cool, I'm using UFS2 with softupdates on my /var, /tmp, and /usr filesystems.
    • I have had a 40 GB file on UFS1 so I am pretty sure UFS2 can handle files larger than 2 GB.


  • FreeBSD itself is a very unique OS, being a real UNIX, yet very free, even for commercially modified versions (unlike the GPL license). Its focus is on robustness, yet supporting a large variety of hardware, unlike Open/NetBSD. Sure NetBSD supports more architecture, but sacrifices on many other features, OpenBSD may try to be more robust but sacrifices other flexibilities.

    Linux has a motherload of features, everything from Supercomputer support to watches, more hardware than FreeBSD and many other experimental crap that most OSes didnt even think about, but at that point it sacrifices stability. Sure Ive run high-availibility servers on Linux but using newer features and drivers breaks it. Linux will take its time maturing, given attention shifts to stability more than features; FreeBSD is already there.

  • 1. Set up formirrorsonly.freebsd.org ftp server
    2. Give all mirrors a login, one ip per account (= leaked login is fairly harmless)
    3. Announce a reasonable "mirroring" timeframe
    4. Make mirrors run a cron job (or whatever *BSD has) at the end of the mirroring time, making it simultaniously availible on all (non-lazy) mirrors. Announce it on main website at the same time.
    5. Stop whining about how everybody wrecks everything before it's ready.
    6. ???
    7. Benefit

    Kjella
  • I just downloaded the mini disk and installed FreeBSD 5.0. I also installed KDE and several other applications.

    All seems to be working quite well so far.

    Congratulations to the Release Team.

  • GEOM sounds interesting (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @06:25PM (#5115044) Journal
    I hope one can run GEOM filters in userland. Sounds like a way to implement a totally soft file system.

    I'll use the eponymous plan9 example of ftpfs [bell-labs.com]

    ftps -m /n/FreeBSD ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD

    This would mount the remote ftp site into your local namespace so that when you did ls /n/FreeBSD you got the directory listing of ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD

    Shell programmers will instantly see the advantage of such a system over application level ftp clients.

    You can use all the tools you presently use for files for manipulating the remote filesystem. None of your applications will have to understand ftp to operate and you can write new ones without even worrying about ftp libraries or whatever difficult protocol you can envisage.

    plan9 achieves all this by employing a kind of universal protocol called 9p [now 9p2000] [bell-labs.com]. It's quite a simple protocol and just does not much more than read, write, walk.

    It sounds like the filtering system is a way to implement virtual file systems. I do hope so.

    There are many interesting applications for such a concept. The list supplied with plan9 is here [bell-labs.com]

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