FreeBSD 6.2 Released To Mirrors

AlanS2002 writes "FreeBSD 6.2 has been released to mirrors. The release notes for your specific platform are also available. FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium and Athlon), amd64 compatible (including Opteron, Athlon64, and EM64T), ARM, IA-64, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. Additional platforms are in various stages of development."

Availability

The release announcement will not be available for a couple of hours. Slashdot jumped the gun as usual.

Torrents are available. [freebsd.org]

A script for upgrading FreeBSD 6.1 systems is available. [daemonology.net]

Re:Availability

If you have nero (not tried under Xnix) you can load the iso and then select DVD as the medium in the top left corner, then it will burn each CD onto a DVD :)

Release announcement

FreeBSD 6.2 has now been announced [freebsd.org].

Re:with an ad no less

nothing has changed other than the version number

From the release announcement:

Some of the highlights:

• freebsd-update(8) provides officially supported binary updates for security fixes and errata patches
• Experimental support for CAPP security event auditing
• OpenBSM audit command line tool suite and library
• KDE updated to 3.5.4, GNOME updated to 2.16.1
• csup(1) integrated cvsup client now included
• Disk integrity protection and authentication added to geli(4)
• New amdsmb(4), enc(4) ipmi(4), nfsmb(4), stge(4) drivers
• IPFW(4) packet tagging
• Linux emulation support for sysfs
• BIND updated to 9.3.3
• Many driver updates including em(4), arcmsr(4), ath(4), bce(4), ata(4), and iwi(4)

nope

UNIX is a trademark. It's even a registered trademark. A trademark is not a copyright. (and not a patent either, nor a trade secret)

AT+T's lawsuit ran in to problems becuase they hadn't properly protected their code from unpublished disclosure. At the time, copyright law was very different, so this mattered. The judge indicated that AT+T might not have copyright to some things. AT+T was also caught violating Berkeley's copyright.

On the other hand, the trademark was being violated by BSDI and there may have been some minor problems in the BSD code base.

So the parties agreed to quit and keep things quiet.

If you want to use the trademark, you need a license. Licenses are easy to get, provided that you fully and correctly implement an OS that follows a standard called the Single UNIX Specification. FreeBSD violates this standard in many ways, and is thus inelligible for getting a license to use the trademark.

Linux isn't UNIX either, though it's now close enough that the Open Group can maintain a small list of deviations that need to be voted out of existance.

But wait.....

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

Re:But wait.....

If you're refering to the AT&T vs BSDi lawsuit, you're 10 years late :-)

Race to post the first FUD?

Seems like there was some sort of a race to see who could post the most FUD the fastest. Almost like the /. story was placed to achieve just that.

Well my computer is working awefully well for one running on an OS that is dying. And I haven't even CVSUPd from the prerelease to the release yet.

Ha! I did it!

I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting for this release.

So last night I downloaded 6.1 and installed it.

Voila! 6.2 out today.

Wanna see it rain? I'm going to go wash my car.

Re:Ha! I did it!

Luckily, FreeBSD has an excellent system for updating the operating system by source code. This guide [freebsd.org] teaches you how to update to the latest stable release of FreeBSD via source code. It's really nice and works well. Just remember to use FreeBSD-STABLE instead of FreeBSD-CURRENT, unless you are a FreeBSD developer or are interested in the absolute latest development version of FreeBSD, working or not.

Upgrading from 4.x

I run FreeBSD 4.11 on a number of machines, many of which I have no physical access to. Those who keep up with such things will know that 4.11 will be EOL'd for security purposes as of the end of this month (i.e. the RELENG_4_11 branch will no longer have guaranteed security updates). Does anyone have any experience with a remote, networked upgrade from 4.11 to 6.x? I dread that this is going to become necessary sooner rather than later, and I'm curious if anyone can give any pointers on the migration, or if it's even possible without physical access and burned media.

Thanks in advance..!

Re:Upgrading from 4.x

From RELNOTES.TXT:

3 Upgrading from previous releases of FreeBSD

      Source upgrades to FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE are only supported from
      FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE or later. Users of older systems wanting to
      upgrade 6.2-RELEASE will need to update to FreeBSD 5.3 or newer
      first, then to FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE.

And from INSTALL.TXT:

    Warning: Binary upgrades to FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE from FreeBSD
          4-STABLE are not supported at this time. There are some files
          present in a FreeBSD 4-STABLE whose presence can be disruptive,
          but are not removed by a binary upgrade. One notable example is
          that an old /usr/include/g++ directory will cause C++ programs
          to compile incorrectly (or not at all).

annnd, now it's official

From: Ken Smith
Date: Jan 15, 2007 12:29 AM
Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD 6.2 Released
To: [e-mail]
....

So, wow, Slashdot was only an hour and eleven minutes ahead of the announcement.

If you're not on the announce mailing list, the full text should appear at this URL soon: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.2R/announce.html [freebsd.org] -- not yet working as I write this!

But...

..does it run linux?

*runs*

Re:But...

..does it run linux?
 
*runs*

You probably weren't expecting a serious reply but... yes, it does [freebsd.org]. Note that this isn't running some kind of virtual machine emulation -- it's running Linux binaries natively on the processor and doing some kind of magical remapping of kernel and library calls that, to be honest, I don't understand that well. More details in this article [onlamp.com].
 

Re:But...

The article has fewer details than the last section of the chapter you linked to, which basically explains everything.

When the ELF loader sees the Linux brand, the loader replaces a pointer in the proc structure. All system calls are indexed through this pointer (in a traditional UNIX system, this would be the sysent[] structure array, containing the system calls). In addition, the process is flagged for special handling of the trap vector for the signal trampoline code, and several other (minor) fix-ups that are handled by the Linux kernel module.

The Linux system call vector contains, among other things, a list of sysent[] entries whose addresses reside in the kernel module.

When a system call is called by the Linux binary, the trap code dereferences the system call function pointer off the proc structure, and gets the Linux, not the FreeBSD, system call entry points.

In addition, the Linux mode dynamically reroots lookups; this is, in effect, what the union option to file system mounts (not the unionfs file system type!) does. First, an attempt is made to lookup the file in the /compat/linux/original-path directory, then only if that fails, the lookup is done in the /original-path directory. This makes sure that binaries that require other binaries can run (e.g., the Linux toolchain can all run under Linux ABI support). It also means that the Linux binaries can load and execute FreeBSD binaries, if there are no corresponding Linux binaries present, and that you could place a uname(1) command in the /compat/linux directory tree to ensure that the Linux binaries could not tell they were not running on Linux.

In effect, there is a Linux kernel in the FreeBSD kernel; the various underlying functions that implement all of the services provided by the kernel are identical to both the FreeBSD system call table entries, and the Linux system call table entries: file system operations, virtual memory operations, signal delivery, System V IPC, etc... The only difference is that FreeBSD binaries get the FreeBSD glue functions, and Linux binaries get the Linux glue functions (most older OS's only had their own glue functions: addresses of functions in a static global sysent[] structure array, instead of addresses of functions dereferenced off a dynamically initialized pointer in the proc structure of the process making the call).

Which one is the native FreeBSD ABI? It does not matter. Basically the only difference is that (currently; this could easily be changed in a future release, and probably will be after this) the FreeBSD glue functions are statically linked into the kernel, and the Linux glue functions can be statically linked, or they can be accessed via a kernel module.

Yeah, but is this really emulation? No. It is an ABI implementation, not an emulation. There is no emulator (or simulator, to cut off the next question) involved.

So why is it sometimes called "Linux emulation"? To make it hard to sell FreeBSD! Really, it is because the historical implementation was done at a time when there was really no word other than that to describe what was going on; saying that FreeBSD ran Linux binaries was not true, if you did not compile the code in or load a module, and there needed to be a word to describe what was being loaded--hence "the Linux emulator".

Also there is this, which is another good explanation of the differences between but support for the two OS's in FreeBSD programming.

FreeBSD is an extremely flexible system. It offers other ways of calling the kernel. For it to work, however, the system must have Linux emulation installed.

Linux is a Unix-like system. However, its kernel uses the Microsoft system-call convention of passing parameters in registers. As with the Unix convention, the function number is placed in EAX. The parameters, however, are not passed on the stack but in EBX, ECX, EDX, ESI, EDI, EBP:

open: mo

FreeBSD 6.2 Released to Minors

That's what I read at first.

I don't know what a child would have to do to deserve that.

now, did I mean that as a reward or as a punishment? Let the fanboys decide!

Linux ripped it off?

I do believe Linux was born before FreeBSD... hehe... Now now I didn't say Unix. I have used the BSD's in the past and I have to admit I am glad to see it still creeping forward.

Re:Linux ripped it off?

The first release of Linux was in 1991. FreeBSD 1.0 was not released until 1993 so, in a way, you are right. FreeBSD, however, was a fork of 386BSD, which was first released in 1992, five months after Linux 0.1. 386BSD itself, however, was merely the i386 port of 4.3BSD (unencumbered), and 4.3BSD was released two months before the first public release of Linux. 4.3BSD, of course, was only the latest in a long line of BSD releases. The first release in the 4.x series was in 1980, eleven years before Linux and four years before the GNU project started.

The i386 was the first Intel chip that had the memory protection mechanisms required to run a real UNIX. Although they were released in 1985, it took some time for people to get around to porting UNIX to run on them. It wasn't until around 1990 that the PC was so firmly entrenched that it made sense to run Linux on such an inferior architecture; people who wanted a real computer but were on a budget got a cheap 68K machine.

m0n0wall

Then I guess M0n0wall is not far off from release either.

The next version of m0n0wall will be based on FreeBSD 6.2 release.

For the curious:

http://m0n0.ch/wall/beta-1.3.php [m0n0.ch]

Pleasantly surprised with laptop support!

I downloaded the netboot version of 6.2RC2 some days back and was pleasantly surprised to find that almost all the hardware was correctly recognized. This is a 2 year old compaq laptop with an Ralink PCMCIA wireless card. Not even the latest Linux distros can detect this card but OpenBSD and FreeBSD have the excellent ral [freebsd.org] driver in the kernel. Moreover the configuration is so simple when compared to the mess in Linux (iwconfig,iwpriv,ifconfig??) not to mention the troubles I had with ndiswrapper

All the BSD's use X.org anyway nowadays, so the folks who are looking for a good GUI environment won't be disappointed. Again, the laptop display settings were correctly detected and I didn't have to touch xorg.conf at all

Give OpenBSD and FreeBSD a try - you won't regret it. Having said that, prepare to actually RTFM in case you run into problems. 99% of the time the answers are in the fine integrated documentation that comes along with your OS install.

Sweet!

But does it run li^H^H the burninating crusade? [worldofwarcraft.com]

questions from a linux guy

Recently I had the opportunity to look at some *bsd derivative systems, mainly firewalls and
small servers, and really liked how they were well designed, clean and stable. Therefore I'd like to take a better look at *bsd (*) and probably start using it among my other linux machines. My question is: what are the general caveats for someone coming from Linux, eg. that missing or different command/device/configuration file/installation procedure, etc. In other words those simple tasks that could be made difficult by thinking at them "the linux way"?

* I used *bsd because it's still not clear to me which bsd will suit my needs. I'll probably have to try them all.

Re:questions from a linux guy

Some differences between GNU/Linux and *BSD from the top of my head:

1. Device names are different. What Linux calls /dev/hda, OpenBSD and NetBSD call /dev/wd0, and FreeBSD calls it /dev/ad0, I believe.

2. Partition maps are different. Linux uses DOS (or BIOS, I'm not sure where they originate from) partition tables on the PC, and Apple partition tables on Power Macs. I don't know about other architectures. The BSDs use BSD disklabels, where each partition gets a letter (from a to z), with some letters having special meanings (e.g. a is the root device, c is the whole device). For example, if your root partition in /dev/hda1 under Linux, it would be /dev/wd0a in OpenBSD. FreeBSD also supports DOS partitions, but calls them "slices". Linux's /dev/hda1 would be /dev/ad0s1 under FreeBSD, IIRC.

3. The BSDs do not implement a lot of GNU extensions. This includes library functions (e.g. there's no strndup on OpenBSD), command line switches, and makefile directives. Of course, a lot of software is shared among BSD and GNU systems, but the differences will bite you sometimes. GNU usually implements BSD extensions.

4. GNU make is usually available on BSD systems, but under the name gmake. make is BSD make, which has a different set of extensions to basic make.

5. BSD systems provide third-party software primarily through the ports system (called pkgsrc on NetBSD), although binary packages may also be available. This is not common in Linux distributions, although Gentoo mimics the BSDs in this.

6. There is generally a higher focus on source code. For example, upgrades are typically performed by first getting the latest version of the source code through CVS, and then running "make world".

7. The BSD startup scripts are usually much simpler than those found on Linux distributions, which typically use SysV style init scripts.

8. The BSDs consist of a complete operating system that is maintained as a single unit, whereas, with Linux distros, the kernel, libc, core utilities, etc. are usually maintained and upgraded independently.

9. The BSDs pride themselves on technical quality and good documentation, whereas GNU/Linux is heavier on features and making things work _today_. Complaining about missing features, or asking questions without having read the documentation is likely to rub BSD people the wrong way. Be especially careful with OpenBSD developers.

10. The BSDs have traditional, monolithic kernels. All have some features available as loadable modules, but the modularization is definitely not strong as in Linux. Stability is considered more important.

11. The choice of filesystems is more limited on the BSDs than it is on Linux. All support Berkely FFS, as well as some variations on it, fat, and ext2, but there's no ReiserFS, JFFS2, QNX fs, etc.

12. Among the BSDs, NetBSD focuses on clean code and portability, OpenBSD focuses on security, and FreeBSD is the most featureful. Dragonfly BSD is a fork of FreeBSD that aims to provide a more modern architecture with a microkernel and without the Big Kernel Lock. There are some others, too, but I don't know what they're about.

Just to put this information in perspective: I've used GNU/Linux since 1996, and OpenBSD for about 5 years. My experience with NetBSD and FreeBSD is only sporadic. I've also created ports for OpenBSD and NetBSD, as well as developed quite some new software for them. If you count Mac OS X as a BSD, I've got about 2 years of experience with it, including the creation of pkgsrc ports for it.

If you haven't before...

...this is as good an opportunity as any to discover FreeBSD for yourself. As I wrote in my journal, it's a fantastic OS...very much worth obtaining a copy of and investigating.

I've also noticed how much the comments attached to this article are riddled with trolls, flamebait, and assorted rubbish. Richard Stallman was the first to slander the BSD license and attempt to discourage its' use, and it is obvious that there are Linux users who seek to continue their master's work in that regard, and shame themselves in the process. They tell people a lot more about their own character (or lack thereof) than about that of what they are attacking.

Re:If you haven't before...

Licenses are just that: licenses.

BSD-like licenses do not prevent your competitors from taking your contributions, improving upon them and keeping the improvements for themselves, turning what you did as open-source into closed-source/proprietary stuff, even using it to compete against you. If you are bigger than other fish, investing in BSD makes more sense.

GPL-like licenses, on the other hand, would require your competitor to release its improvements keeping the field level. If you find the ideals behind GPL attractive, you will also feel more comfortable that improvements on your work will not become proprietary software. If you are smaller than most of the other fish, GPL makes more sense.

If we (as a company) were to invest a given amount of resources in an improvement we did wish to keep to ourselves and eventually sell, we could choose a project that had a BSD-like license. If, however, we wanted to use that improvements to foster an ecosystem where no one should gain much advantage over us, we would choose a GPL-licensed project.

They are tools. You pick the one that makes sense.

FreeBSD on laptops?

I tried to install FreeBSD 6.0 on my HP Pavilion but it didn't recognise the network card (I forget what its called , driver is forcedeth under linux). Has laptop support been improved ? Does the team have laptops in mind for freebsd or is it more a desktop/server system still?

FreeBSD from scratch?

I find the intricacies of the BSD system very confusing, and those of the Unix systems in general too. This is why linux from scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] has been of invaluable help for me. Is there some way to install a BSD system starting from kernel, libc, init, boot loader etcetc?

An Observation . . . . .

Sun Tzu, in his very insightful book, The Art of War, observed that victory is best obtained when division and rift is created within the enemy and thus, no organized attack can be made. I find Sun Tzu's observation to be so unfortunately true in the F/OSS world. In the "war" between proprietary and open source, the winning parties are the proprietary operating system makers. This is happening because the open source parties are criticizing each other and spreading fear, uncertaintly, and doubt about each others products. As long as the BSD and Linux camps continue to fight, as evidenced in much of the comments about this article, Microsoft will be able to plow ahead. I personally like both BSD and Linux and they play very nicely together. Both are excellent with strengths and weaknesses that seem to complement each other. If there would be greater cooperation, than I could see great things happening. Right now, Microsoft does not have too much to worry about as it is still dominant in the desktop OS market and the open source camps are as divided as ever. While I love a good flame war against an enemy, I see little good in a flame war from within.

Smooth move!

Good job slashdot - linking directly to the primary server instead of a list of mirrors. Surely it won't bother anyone!

Not that anyone here is concerned about the stability of other people's servers...

how much life does 4.x have left?

I have a server provided by a webhost with FreeBSD 4.9 on it. Is there going to be a point at which the 4.x series is no longer supported, and there are no security updates, etc.?

ipw3945?

Unless I am missing something in the release notes, still no support for this wireless chip. Hopefully in 6.3/7!

BSD at Linux Expo in Los Angeles

FreeBSD will have a booth on the expo floor of the 2007 Southern Califrornia Linux Expo [socallinuxexpo.org] in Los Angeles, CA. Feb 9-11, 2007
Additionally FreeBSD developers will be presenting in the seminar tracks.

Re:x86 compatible?

Is there a point to your at least pedantic, and at most douchebaggy, comment about the difference between x86 and IA32?

Re:x86 compatible?

Oh crap! What am I going to do with my cluster of 4Mhz XT machines now!?

Re:x86 compatible?

Not run FreeBSD on them?

Re:x86 compatible?

Oh crap! What am I going to do with my cluster of 4Mhz XT machines now!?

Yeah, I had the turbo switch fixed and everything...

Re:Optional Lame Apple Joke...

But does it run on the iPhone or the Apple TV?

You're thinking of NetBSD that claims to run on everything, not FreeBSD :)

Re:someday

Linux is still at 2.6. What timezone are you in?

Re:x86 compatible?

According to the latest release notes, not all IA32 processors are supported as the 80386 is not specifically listed. Support for the 80386 was dropped starting with 6.0: http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/i386.html [freebsd.org]

Re:*BSD is Dying

Considering the announcement in the topic...

"I'm not dead yet!"

"I'm getting better!"

"I don't want to go on the cart!"

Re:Optional Lame Apple Joke...

You're confusing this with NetBSD...

Re:Installed it this morning

With 6.2, csup [freebsd.org] is even better...

Re:I noramlly check Distrowatch.com

I hear you. I went through all sorts of pain to get the HP Raid 3i (which basically uses the 'megaraid' driver, so I guess it is rebrandred) working on my quad xeon. I had to use gentoo, but somehow, I had to install using knoppix and 2.4 kernel.

The machine is sort of wonky, too. I wonder if FreeBSD would be a happy camper on it.. Maybe I'll give it a try :)

Re:I noramlly check Distrowatch.com

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

Re:I noramlly check Distrowatch.com

FreeBSD is actually a good OS.
Yes, it's very nice

Mac users use it,
No they don't, they use Mach with a BSD api wrapper

Solaris is based around it,
No it's not, Solaris was on the SysV side of the SysV/BSD Unix wars (not a bad thing, Solaris is nice too)

and most of Linux is a cheap ripoff of it.
No, Linux is a school project based loosely off SunOS & Minix

Re:is this news?

One word: "Vista"

Thank you captain pedantic

However these days, x86 is taken to mean "Current CPUs based on the x86 ISA." If you mosey to nVidia's drive page you'll notice they talk about Vista x86 and Vista x64 drivers. What they mean are 32 and 64-bit drivers, of course, both x86 ISA. They don't mean that the x86 drivers will run on any platform, indeed Vista itself will run on nothing less than a Pentium 3 and thus it wouldn't be meaningful for the drivers to support less.

There's no point in breaking down support by specific chip level unless you just feel like being pedantic for no reason, thus people just say "x86" and use it to mean reasonably modern 32-bit x86 ISA chips.

If you really are concerned about compatibility with hardware that old, well, go get DOS and deal with the limitations.

Re:I noramlly check Distrowatch.com

FreeBSD is the only distro I found that supports the embedded AMI megaRAID controller "out-of-the-box".

small correction: FreeBSD is not a "distro", it's a full blown OS.