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Announcements Operating Systems BSD

FreeBSD XP^H^H 4.5 available now 362

Posted by Nik from the this-time,-with-feeling dept.
The_Rift was one of many who wrote in with this news: "The official mail has gone out to the FreeBSD-announce mailing list announcing the availability of Freebsd 4.5. Check your local mirrors for the ISOs.". The release notes have all the details, but take it from me -- this one is worth it just for the TCP/IP performance improvements by Matt Dillon and others. Kudos to Murray, Bruce, and the rest of the release engineering team.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

FreeBSD XP^H^H 4.5 available now More

FreeBSD XP^H^H 4.5 available now

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  • freebsd is good (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've tried FreeBSD 4.4 and since then, it hasn't left my laptop and my desktop.
    I like the fact that it is coherent and most of all, the stability missing from most linux distribution is amazing.

    Good job!
  • Don't you just love the DEL/BS thing?

  • Why call it XP? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why do you call it XP? Anyway, I recently tried to install 4.4 on my Windows XP laptop. I used Partition Magic to shrink the NTFS partition, added a couple logical partitions, and when it came time to install, found out that BSD doesn't even recognize the logical partitions. Something about "slices". Settled for SuSE (which ain't all that, IMHO) Should I reconsider FreeBSD now? I run RedHat 7.2 on my desktop. (RedHat 7.2 and Mandrake 8.1 weren't easy to set up on the laptop either)

    • Re:Why call it XP? (Score:2, Informative)

      by aje ( 554249 )
      I think you should try to install the FreeBSD-partition slice onto a primary partition. The partition contains all subslices, which the system is installed onto (/, /usr, /var etc.). I have absolutely no experiences (XP :) with FreeBSD on laptops - the hardware acceleration for for instance X might be a problem (console should run fine).

      Regards

    • For the record, logical partitions are a fictional creation of Microsoft and are extremely scary, unnecessary things which you should probably avoid when using a sane operating system. You can have up to four primary partitions -- extended partitions and "logical drives" exist to expand that. The (sane) idea was that, if you used your first three partitions and expansion to more was imminent or necessary, you'd throw an extended partition in the fourth and put as many logical drives in it as you needed. You know, hda1-4 ... then your logical drives are hda5 and up.

      It's a nice idea but since MS-DOS you've only been allowed to make one primary partition, and after that you're forced to put in an extended partition and logical drives. Most operating systems need to be installed on a primary, so your best bet would be using the operating system in question to set up the partition table. Last I checked even XP won't let you add more than one primary partition, but I could be wrong.

      I've had the same problem with Intel Solaris. Bleh.

      • Yes, logical partitions are fictitional. So are all partitions. They're just conventions on how to share sections of the disk. Come to think of it -- files are fictitional, so are jpegs. etc.

        Or did you just mean to suggest that the name logical partition is somehow less valid than logical drive.

        Regardless of how problematic you view this system to be, it is the normal way of slicing the disk up into more than four chunks that can be shared among many operating systems on the x86 platform. You don't have to like it, but you'd think FreeBSD -- which is native to x86 -- would support it.

  • Did you know that a simple name change could get more people to try FreeBSD, or at least get 'em interested in it.

    FreeBDSM... Sure, they'd all be perferts, but hell... a user's a user.

    Lame joke, I know. but I warned you.
  • I thought they were making this on a bootable DVD [slashdot.org]? Isn't that the point of having access to the company's DVD burner. Daily archives be damned, I wanna play with a new OS on a single disk!

    Oh well, I guess I'll just erase some Corel Linux CD-RW's.

    Someone tell me how to install this over a network, please.

    • interesting question. I wonder if they would make a dvd size iso... probably not, but maybe. I am willing to bet you have to buy it to get the dvd.

    • Re:Where's the DVD (Score:5, Informative)

      by Metrol ( 147060 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @06:22AM (#2924387) Homepage
      Someone tell me how to install this over a network, please.

      The FreeBSD folks have already done this, in very plain language [freebsd.org].

      For myself, I'm doing a cvsup now as I write this. Make world gonna start to cooking tomorrow night. I'm probably about 2 weeks behind the release as I try to update fairly regularly with the latest stuff.

      The really good part about this is that all that stuff that's been held back for release is now gonna start flowing back into the ports tree and src directories. Yummy!

    • Re:Where's the DVD (Score:3, Informative)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
      Someone tell me how to install this over a network, please.

      you need two floppies

      kern.flp and mfsroot.flp

      boot with them and choose a few menu items and it's off

      all detailed at the freeBSD homepages of course

  • Check you local mirrors for the ISOs? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:50AM (#2924320)
    Check your local mirrors for the ISOs

    and waste a lot of bandwidth in the process. cvsup is your friend [freebsd.org].

    • I was going on the principle that people who are allready running FreeBSD would know about CVSup and linked to the mirrors for the newbies.
  • Though, I personally would have saved the XP comment for when FreeBSD 5.0 gets released sometime during Q4 this year.

    If it weren't for the uptime on my server, (64 days...upgraded the mobo again), I'd be working on this one right now!
  • I'm surprised to see that a new feature of that release is... syncookies. Doesn't Linux (and probably a lot of other OS) have that for years? Syn floods is a very old attack, and I can't understand why FreeBSD only implements syncookies now.
    • A) if you where to really setup a firewall to battle attacks/dos, etc, I would recomend OpenBSD. Second, you can compile into the kernel IPFilter which does support a stateful firewall configuration as well as acception and denyal of TCP packets based on the flag (SYN/ACK/FYN) etc. Once the rule has been accepted, the end packet stream is accepted into the state. I believe this is the same thing as syn-cookie, only better.) I hope someone reading this will give a bit more insight into the issue, because IANAFE (firewall expert).

      In my experience the IPF and PF firewall configurations are the most simple, flexible and powerful to use, and can be found on freebsd and openbsd and probably the others.

      • I'm not sure how you went from syncookies to OpenBSD, but you did mention stateful inspection, so flame on!

        Stateful Inspection(tm), stateful inspection, and TCP flag checks are not all the same thing. The INSPECT engine included in FireWall-1 is a dynamically-programmable state machine, capable of semi-complicated connection state tracking over a variety of connection-oriented (e.g. TCP) and connectionless (e.g. UDP) protocols. INSPECT is, in some form or another, patented. IPFILTER 's keep state clause (and IPFW's dynamic rules using the keep-state clause and the check state rule) also tracks connection state, but only for ICMP, UDP, and TCP, and it can only be changed by re-compiling the appropriate C code.

        Here's the rant part: SIMPLY CHECKING TCP FLAGS IS NOT STATEFUL INSPECTION!! It's sometimes called stateless inspection and it means that a decision to pass or block a packet is decided on the characteristics of that packet alone. Allowing J. Random TCP packet to go through the firewall with a cursory check of the headers means I can do FIN or ACK scans through your firewall, and if you've got it set up to only log connection attempts, the scans won't even be logged. Suck!

        As for stop denial of service attacks (aside: I hope to God I'm not the only person who has to figure out whether a person means the operating system or the network attack every time he sees those three letters), the only way to do that is to implement proper ingress AND egress filters on the gateway firewall or router. Needless to say, this is complicated, so most people don't bother.

        Only you can prevent forest fires and improperly configured firewalls.

        • No flaming, just would like to know more..

          SIMPLY CHECKING TCP FLAGS IS NOT STATEFUL INSPECTION!! It's sometimes called stateless inspection and it means that a decision to pass or block a packet is decided on the characteristics of that packet alone.

          Well, based on what you just said.. I still am ok. My rules basically states, only allow the packet into the state if it a) meets the port/proto requirements, b) meets the TCP Flags (S/SA). You seem to know what your talking about , so I am asking.. wouldn't that block a FIN/ACK scan through the firewall, being that the state wouldn't be established unless you met the criteria?

          Cheers

          • The rule you describe (only allow S/SA and keep state) would indeed block a FIN or ACK scan.

            For example, I have the following IPFILTER rule installed on my firewall:

            pass in log first quick on fxp0 proto tcp from any to 10.63.1.1 port = 3389 flags S keep state keep frags group 132 # wtsrv
            This allows the initial SYN packet in, and tracks state from there on out. The next packet it allows through the firewall must be a SYNACK, and the packets following that must be ACKs, RSTs, or FINs. Once it sees the terminating FIN or RST, it removes the connection from the dynamic state. If it doesn't complete the handshake (SYN, SYNACK, ACK), the dynamic rule times out pretty quickly. If it does complete the handshake, I think the default timeout is on the order of a few days.

            Sorry about the flame bit. It's just that so many people mis-understand stateful firewall rules that I try to explain it to avoid people getting confused.

    • Yes, in fact, I remember quite clearly when Linux 2.0 got syncookies. I'd wager 2.0.27 or 2.0.28. The syncookies implementation was totally awful. I was a pretty newbie sysadmin at the time, and whenever someone checked POP3 mail on our mailserver.. it'd warn us about sending syn cookies, and that all the students were attacking the mailserver whenever they loaded Microsoft Internet Mail.

      I didn't quite know what syncookies were. I just knew I didn't want them anymore after that. If it was an option in FreeBSD at that time, I would have laughed at the option, and subsequently turned it off. After other issues in 2.0.28 (was Linus drunk?), I tried FreeBSD by suggestion of my brother. Been pretty happy since.

      I'm sure the issues I had have been long fixed in the Linux tree, and should be in the new FreeBSD implementation, I hope. :)

      I'd check the CVS commits on the Linux kernel to give more precise info of the syncookies, but I can't seem to find them linked from http://www.linux.org/

    • Re:syncookies? only now? (Score:5, Informative)

      by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @08:29AM (#2924710) Homepage
      FreeBSD has had a syncache for quite some time now; it has never been clear which of the two is technically superior.

      Now FreeBSD implements both commonly accepted solutions; I haven't looked at the code enough to say for certain, but I'd assume that syn cookies would be used in order to avoid connection loss only during *very* high packet rates (10^5+ SYN packets/second) since the syn cache works fine up to those levels.

  • FreeBSD 4.x STABLE branch. (Score:4, Funny)

    by AntipodesTroll ( 552543 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @06:11AM (#2924358) Homepage
    It turns out it is a good thing that 5.0-CURRENT was frozen, and they concentrated on 4.X STABLE. It means I dont have to worry about changing to a new 5.X branch.

    It was kinda annoying that the FreeBSD guys obsoleted 3.X so quickly, they had only really just fixed the glaring issues with the ATA driver corruption problem and other important issues (that affected my use of FreeBSD 3.4 for fileserving) and then they went and obsoleted it.

    If 4.X stays as the most current tree in STABLE for another year, hell, another 2 years, I for one will be happy. I dont see the 1-year cycle for major number increments as much really other than ticking over the most siginificant version-numbers. Stuff that gets MFC'd from CURRENT is usually good enough for STABLE, Look at Linus, he dosent feel a need to tick over the major version numbers for Linux. I'd stay with FreeBSD 4.x if it goes all the way to (say) 4.7 or 4.8.

  • Time to give it a try? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John Betonschaar ( 178617 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @06:21AM (#2924380)
    Maybe I should really check out the FreeBSD FAQ & site & stuff, but hey, there's a lot of experts around here who can help me out, so I'll throw it in anyways:

    Is it worthwhile for me to try FreeBSD now? I've already installed Win 95/98/2000, RedHat, Slackware,Suse,Debian & BeOS before and I still have an unfinished Linux from scratch install lurking around, but until now only Debian, Slack & Win 2000 stayed on long enough to make real use of them. ATM I'm running Debian w/KDE2.2 and I'm really happy with it, but hey, I still have a free 2Gig partition.

    Can I run all apps/libs (or equivalents of the same quality) I use regularly now on FreeBSD? That would be KDE2.2, XMMS, OpenGL on GeForce2, MSN client, \LaTeX{}, Java1.2 a.o. Would It really bring me some extra performance/stability?

    The whole FreeBSD approach does appeal to me, so I'm definitely interested in trying, but only if it has a real chance becoming my primary LILO partion ;-)
    • To be honest, if you are just using workstation apps, and not really using it for anything like a nat box, or the 'server in the closet tha never gets turned off' , it's probably not worth your time. The nice thing about playing with it, you get a feel of something different, which is a good thing. Linux ,, redhat, is not the end-all be-all of server configurations.

      I had a freebsd box sitting my in closet for about 18 months, until I got bored with it and install openbsd. BUT, I don't really do any xwindows stuff on it.. basically web serving, outgoing email gatway, nat, proxy, and the place where I build my Python programs and scripts.

      I guess to summarize my experience, *BSD is not a workstation supliment, but more a compliment. It will sit there and do it's job without much headache. Thats good enough for me ;-)
      • To be honest, if you are just using workstation apps, and not really using it for anything like a nat box, or the 'server in the closet tha never gets turned off' , it's probably not worth your time.

        I have to respectfully disagree. There's nothing that Linux can do that FreeBSD can't. So why is there this perception that Linux is suitable for a workstation but FreeBSD isn't?

        KDE, GNOME, Xmms, StarOffice, Java, Mozilla, Wine, etc., etc. I'm using FreeBSD as my desktop at home and my workstation at work. I couldn't be happier.
    • If you've delved as far as Linux-from-scratch and are happy with Debian and Slackware, you might like to have a look at the Debian-BSD mailing list. There was an article here about it around a week ago. Most of the work going on is around a NetBSD port, but others are working on a FreeBSD port. It's at a very early stage where they're still debating what to do about libc (BSD) versus libc6 (GNU) dependencies in packages.

      The list archives are here. [debian.org]

    • Using FreeBSD after experience with Linux is actually a good idea. You will find it a bit more challenging than Linux, but the rewards will be *improved* stability and performance in general. (From my experience in various situations, especially under heavy load).

      I know KDE2.2, XMMMS, and the MSN client will run fine. I also know most source-code apps will compile in general. Also, FreeBSD does have Linux binary compatibility (to an extent). However, if you don't thrash your machine much, you will probably prefer Linux.

      In short, put some time into learning about it and FreeBSD really is a fantastic OS. I would recommend it to tech-savvy people anyday. And it's constantly getting better (not dying :-P).

      --jquirke

    • Re:Time to give it a try? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ded Bob ( 67043 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @09:58AM (#2925114) Homepage
      Can I run all apps/libs (or equivalents of the same quality) I use regularly now on FreeBSD? That would be KDE2.2, XMMS, OpenGL on GeForce2, MSN client, \LaTeX{}, Java1.2 a.o. Would It really bring me some extra performance/stability?

      KDE2.2: yes
      XMMS: yes
      OpenGL: yes
      GeForce2: yes, but not hardware accelerated. Fortunately, it is being worked on: http://nvidia.netexplorer.org/news.html
      MSN client: ?, there are Jabber clients for instant messenging with MSN.
      LaTeX: yes
      Java: in a few days. It is standard with FreeBSD (they paid the licenses fees). It is v1.3.
      Extra performance/stability: yes (SMP is lacking)/yes

      I believe LILO can handle FreeBSD.
      • >Extra performance/stability: yes (SMP is lacking)/yes


        SMP is not lacking, at least for x86.


        >I believe LILO can handle FreeBSD.


        yes, and FreeBSD's loader can handle linux partitions.


        hawk

        • > > Extra performance/stability: yes (SMP is lacking)/yes

          > SMP is not lacking, at least for x86.

          He was asking about extra performance of FreeBSD over Linux. I wanted him to know that SMP is not quite up to par. As he did not mention SMP, I believe he will see very nice performance. I just didn't want others to assume SMP was stellar. When 5.0 comes out, I will have to consider getting me an SMP box.

          > > I believe LILO can handle FreeBSD.

          > yes, and FreeBSD's loader can handle linux partitions.

          Well, he did ask if LILO worked with FreeBSD. Personally, I use FreeBSD's loader.

    • Re:Time to give it a try? (Score:3, Informative)

      by rho ( 6063 )

      I'd recommend giving a few hundred megs to a partition for FreeBSD. Since you're using your computer as a workstation, you won't see that much of a difference. It's not noticeably faster or more stable.

      KDE, et. al. are just Unix programs. They work fine on BSD. The real difference is how you install it. Wait until you give the /usr/ports tree a try. The coolest way ever to install software.

      *BSD is somewhat different from the Linuxes, especially RedHat. My last experience with RH was back at 6.2, but I got frustrated with its habit of tossing thing hither and thither all over the filesystem, and after my RH server was comprimised (buggy wu-ftp), I switched all my machines to Free and OpenBSD.

      I, personally, prefer the BSD way of configuration, and I've been very happy since.

    • I am not an Unix expert, nor a programming one. I played around with Linux for a couple years on a casual basis. I have been working with FreeBSD for about 6 months. I like FreeBSD much better,nothing against Linux glad it's doing well, I just prefer FreeBSD. Some reasons: I got frustrated in all the different flavors of Linux. Do I use RPM or .deb's. Red Hat seems to have their own way of doing things. Along with this the documentation on Linux is harder to follow because of this. Again, if I wasn't a newbie it might not be a big deal. Also, the installation(at least using broadband) it much easier than Linux. I have found ports very easy to use, much easier than Linux, where there always seemed to be a dependency issue. Again, my inexperience may play a role in this opinion. FreeBSD seems to be better server OS than Linux. Linux seems to be a better workstation OS than FreeBSD. My Linux friends tell there are much more end-user apps available but I really just want X-Windows, web browser, e-mail, and a development envirnoment. I am not interested in doing cd-burning, mp3 players, graphic design, and the like. Sorry for the random thoughts, in all I just really like FreeBSD. Take it for what it's worth.
      • "my Linux friends tell me there are much more end-user apps available [for Linux]"

        That's an ignorant myth. A most there are (_literally_) a *few* more apps because of commercial software companies that sell closed source applications.

        Thankfully, FreeBSD can run these as well under it's Linux ABI compatibility.
    • Can I run all apps/libs (or equivalents of the same quality) I use regularly now on FreeBSD? That would be KDE2.2, XMMS, OpenGL on GeForce2, MSN client, \LaTeX{}, Java1.2 a.o. Would It really bring me some extra performance/stability?

      Yes, yes, no, yes, yes, sorta. Most apps for linux compile for freebsd out of the box, and if they don't, you just type 'linux bash' at a shell and install a redhat rpm. nVidia is never going to release a driver for freebsd, closed or otherwise (don't start with OSX, it's not even close to the same thing at that level), or sufficient specs to write one. There's native Java now, but I doubt they'll port a retrograde version -- it should be backward compatible anyway.

      The whole FreeBSD approach does appeal to me, so I'm definitely interested in trying, but only if it has a real chance becoming my primary LILO partion ;-)

      We may yet see the death of LILO and it won't be too soon. FreeBSD's bootloader is comparable to GRUB and then some. It'll load Linux just fine as well.
      • Most apps for Linux ARE NOT "Apps for Linux". That's why they'll compile. And nVidia OpenGL support is working (though not in the install yet.) See other comments under this story for details and link.
    • Not sure if it would be worth your time trying FreeBSD. But if you do, PLEASE get rid of LILO! :-)
    • Your /. ID isn't terribly high, so I assume you've been here for a while. How is it that after dozens and dozens of BSD stories that people still don't know a damned thing about it? Unix, for the most part, is Unix. There's nothing Linux about KDE, XMMS, etc. Linux and "Open Source" are used together in sentences all the time by people who never give a moment's thought to ./configure && make install and frankly it scares me.

      And now you ask if LaTeX! of all things is on FreeBSD? Dude, TeX (and friends) are OLDER than Linux! So is the X Window System!

      The answer to your question "is it worthwile to try FreeBSD now?" can be found by asking YOURSELF that question. Is it worthwile? Would you gain anything? Not just in performance or stability, but would you maybe learn anything in the process? Would you maybe even find that you just 'like it' better and switch completely? Is spending the time learning another OS (course, it's still Unix so as long as you don't go into it with preconceptions it'll be easy) worth any rewards you may gain?

      This goes for anything, and not just FreeBSD, and not just Operating Systems and computers.

      Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

  • Native JAVA (Score:5, Informative)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @06:26AM (#2924396) Journal
    at last!!!1

    now no fucking about with linux emulated Java

    maybe now I can get java in Konqueror to work

    and I know it's not new but maybe you linux heads might've missed it.

    FreeBSD now has a third party script that will auto-update any ports you've installed.

    cvs update to the lates ports list and run portupgrade -ra and ALL of your port instaleld software will be updated to the latest version and dependencies resolved and reset (and a tool pkgdb will do some pre upgrade checks)

    It's great. I'm going on about it because I'm so impressed with it.

    FreeBSD rocks

    • Re:Native JAVA (Score:3, Insightful)

      by billhuey ( 183070 )
      It's being worked on by me and a number of other folks.

      Native threading is in alpha and I'm currently working on the HotSpot compiler. ;-)

      • Re:Native JAVA (Score:2, Informative)

        by infinii ( 27811 )
        I recently upgraded to 4.5-RC. When installing the /usr/ports/java/jdk13 port, it forced me to install linux-jdk13 first.

        With this native JAVA, does it mean we don't need linux-jdk anymore? Should I cvsup and reinstall my port?

    • Re:Native JAVA (Score:5, Informative)

      by Metrol ( 147060 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @01:20PM (#2926161) Homepage
      I normally don't comment on moderations, but what in the heck got the above message mod'd to a troll? Not only was nothing insulting in that post, he hit on some great points.

      Having to deal with Linux emulated Java does suck. It doesn't integrate well with desktop apps that are compiled to run native on FreeBSD, like Konqueror or Mozilla. It's out of date, thus impacting stand alone apps like JEdit and server side apps as well. It'll be nice to see that Linux emulated Java yanked from the port tree. This is NOT about whether Linux is good or bad.

      The "third-party" script being referred to is an implementation of even greater automation with installing and updating apps. The two key commands involved are "portupgrade" and "portinstall". For you Debian kinda folks this should look awful familiar...

      portinstall gnome
      portupgrade gimp

      Essentially, an even smarter handling of apps building up from the infrastructure of the ports tree rather than trying to replace it. It works smooooooth too. apt-get, eat your heart out :)

      Coupled with cvsup for keeping things all up to the minute, FreeBSD does rock!

      • Re:Native JAVA (Score:2, Informative)

        by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
        y the troll thing got me wondering too

        I've had two in two days that patently aren't

        must've pissed someone off

        I don't care though, I'm in the 45-50 cap zone anyway.

        Sure Debian might have the upgrading problem sorted out
        (but actually I doubt it's as good tbh but that's pure speculation)
        but the other distro's don't.

        The java thing is annoying for me as I've got a project waiting for a java applet and I can't get konq to use java.

        For me FreeBSD brings me consistency and ease of use. Linux has the light but so what, strength to your Penguin. I moved from slackware to FreeBSD (sadly via NT 3.5-4!). I tried Debian but didn't get along with it. My real OS of choice is plan9 but I won't go on.

  • cvsup! (Score:1)

    by mat.h ( 25728 )
    Check your local mirrors for the ISOs.

    Or save some bandwidth and point cvsup to the RELENG_4_5 branch on your local cvsup mirror.

    Something the release notes don't mention: Could someone please clue me in on the state of native Java on FreeBSD? There was an announcement in late December but I haven't heard from it since then. Having to install the Linux JDK to build a FreeBSD JDK can't be the last word.

    • Yes, good idea.
      I just wish I could get it to work. I tried to follow the instructions in the handbook, It was clearly written by someone who knew a lot about how it worked, but, at least for me, the entire message did not come across. I guess if you already into it, the manual is pretty clear.
    • Concerning native Java: According to this interview with Robert Watson [osnews.com] it will be available shortly ofter 4.5-RELEASE. He says "it's in final conformance testing". HTH.

    • Native JDK (Score:2, Informative)

      by ajcpi ( 201360 )
      According to the release notes:
      http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.5R/relnotes-i3 86 .html:


      2.3.2 Ports/Packages Collection
      Due to delays in the certification process, native JDK support for FreeBSD will be released shortly after 4.5-RELEASE. An announcement will be made on the FreeBSD Web site, as well as the FreeBSD announcements mailing list , when the distribution is available.

  • Insulting title (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Anonymous Coward
    One would think that after they entirely fucked up the first story, they could treat the second one with a bit of respect. But no, Nik had to go and give it that insulting article title.

  • 4.4 installer (Score:1, Interesting)

    by boltar ( 263391 )
    I love FreeBSD and wish I'd discovered it years ago instead of messing around with Linux worrying
    about distribution problems but.... frankly the installer on 4.4 was buggy to say the least.
    I hope they've fixed it for 4.5. It was the only thing that cast a cloud on the 4.4 release.
    • frankly the installer on 4.4 was buggy to say the least.

      It's not so much buggy as it is non-intuitive. Unlike the Linux installers I've seen, it doesn't provide a good step by step wizard for what things you do next. I guess you could call that buggy, but it's not like it doesn't work.

      Robert Watson recently commented on this in an interview on OS News [osnews.com]. There's apparently work being done now to get a more straight forward, and quite possibly pertier, installer up and ready for FreeBSD 5.0.

      It's actually a great interview, worthy of it's own thread.
      • The installer has always gone through a step-by-step installation as long as you choose the basic (or beginner, or whatever it is. I make world to upgrade and infrequently do a fresh install.)

  • Should I triy it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by XRayX ( 325543 ) <tobias...boeger@@@web...de> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @06:49AM (#2924457) Homepage Journal
    Should I, as a pretty experienced (Kernel compiling, configuration /etc) Linux User, give it a try?
    I heard a lots of good things about FreeBSD, but how big are the differences to Linux (installation)?
    X

    • Re:Should I triy it? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Arandir ( 19206 )
      Yes, give FreeBSD a try. But don't go in expecting it to be just another Linux distro, because it's not. It's a real Unix in all but name. If you read the manual you shouldn't have too many problems.

      What are the differences? Well that depends. What specific Linux distro are you comparing it to? All the Linux distros are different, so you can't really compare it to Linux as a whole, because that's just the kernel. Some distros don't even use glibc.

      Installation is similar to Slackware and Debian. You won't get a fancy GUI that routinely misdetects your video card. It's very straight forward, sensible, and chock full of help.

      Administration is uses sysinstall, which happens to lead a double life as the installer. No need to learn two programs when one will do. Similar to YaST in that regard. But you can also edit everything by hand in vi, and sysinstall won't undo you changes. You won't have a SysV style init scripts, but BSD (duh!) style scripts instead. I prefer the latter as it's easier to learn and understand. Everything in the base system is configured in one file, rc.conf. Apache, Sendmail, etc., still have their own configuration files though.

      Installing software is similar to Debian and Gentoo. There are precompiled packages available, but the standard way is to use ports, which automatically fetches source, builds and installs. Using the cvsup and portupgrade utilities, keeping your system up to date is simplicity.

      The GNU utilities aren't standard, so if you learned Unix the GNU way you may be thrown for a loop now and then. But if you learned Unix the Unix way, then you'll feel right at home. sh and tcsh are the standard shells, but just install bash if that's what you want. I prefer bash at the command prompt, but I write my scripts for plain vanilla sh.

  • Mirror site speed... no complaints! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Nonesuch ( 90847 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @07:14AM (#2924497) Homepage Journal
    One benefit of being up early (not by choice) is that I'm getting some damn good download speeds from the official FreeBSD mirror sites [freebsdmirrors.org], as in 773KB/s... that's over 6 megabits!

    Not all of the sites have the full set of files (yet), I had to hunt around a bit to find the '4.5-install.iso [freebsd.org]'.

    Don't trust my math on transfer speeds?

    local: 4.5-disc2.iso remote: 4.5-disc2.iso

    227 Entering Passive Mode (192.168.1.1,162,179)
    150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for '4.5-disc2.iso' (631341056 bytes).
    602 MB 00:00 ETA
    226 Transfer complete.
    631341056 bytes received in 796.65 seconds (773.92 KB/s)
    (Yes, that transfer went via a proxy firewall)

  • Damnit.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Night0wl ( 251522 ) <iandow@gm a i l . c om> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @07:48AM (#2924566) Homepage Journal
    I had just finished the first ISO.
    I was about the finish the second ISO (96%)
    and I had 3-5% on each of the third and fourth ISO's

    and then they release 4.5... damnit...

    *deletes 1+ gb of data, and begins again*

    And this is all at a top of 15KB/s. And I can assure you it never got that high.

  • Robert Watson's interview about the release (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @08:28AM (#2924705)
    This interview with Robert Watson [osnews.com] describes many of the new 4.5-RELEASE features, and talks about how they relate to the much more advanced work in 5.0. He also talks about how the Linux development targets relate to those in FreeBSD, and says he reads linux-kernel regularly. It
    sounds like 5.0 should be incredible.

  • What about the new JDK (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thedarkstorm ( 468783 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @09:50AM (#2925076)
    I had thought it was announced that the new Sun Authorized JDK was supposed to be in this release, but I find no information on the readme or the site?
    • The FreeBSD Java people now have a licence from Sun, but they have to go through a testing process before they are allowed distribute the system. It wasn't ready in time for 4.5.

      For now, you have to download the source from Sun, apply patches, and build it.
  • I was running 4.3 until last night, when for some odd reason I decided to upgrade to 4.4. I ran cvsup manually to make sure I had the latest sources, ran "make world", then this morning I compiled a new kernel and rebooted.

    Whaddaya know, it booted up as "4.5-STABLE" instead of "4.4-STABLE". Talk about pleasant surprises... I guess if I read my email before rebooting I would have known.
  • is there also hot Neve Campbell on Denise Richards TCP/IP action? then it really might be time to switch...

  • I have FreeBSD 4.3 on a little x86 pizzabox that will eventually become my firewall and Web server. I'd like to upgrade to 4.5. Everyone I meet says, "just run cvsup and recompile the world."

    Er, uh... Well, first of all, cvsup doesn't appear to be installed by default (why the heck not if it's so integral to keeping the system up to date?). Second, "recompiling the world" seems like a fairly drastic and space-hungry step, particularly since I installed binary packages in the first place (and presuming that actual recompilation is involved). And third, all the docs I could find on FreeBSD.org are rather thin (and even way out of date) on this process.

    Is there a HOWTO or a step-by-step tutorial for FreeBSD newbies to become conversant with cvsup, the ports tree, and upgrading packages?

    Schwab

    • I'll take a crack at helping... First thing you want to do is install cvsup, so su to root, then cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup, then make install clean

      Next, here's my cvsup script (which I have run via cron every Thursday):

      su-2.05# more `which cvsupLatest`
      #!/bin/sh
      sed -e 's/CHANGE_THIS/cvsup9/g' /usr/share/examples/cvsup/stable-supfile > /tmp/stable-supfile && /usr/local/bin/cvsup -g /tmp/stable-supfile
      rm /tmp/stable-supfile
      #rm -rf /usr/ports/www/jakarta-tomcat/
      sed -e 's/CHANGE_THIS/cvsup9/g' /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile > /tmp/ports-supfile && /usr/local/bin/cvsup -g /tmp/ports-supfile
      rm /tmp/ports-supfile

      Running this will update the sources and ports in one go. Finally, I usually use the following to do the whole build world mess in one quick script (change REDRACER to the name of your kernel configuration file):

      su-2.05# more `which makeworld`
      #!/usr/local/bin/bash
      (cd /usr/src/ && make -Bj 4 world && cd /usr/src/ && make -Bj 4 buildkernel KERNCONF=REDRACER && make -Bj 4 installkernel KERNCONF=REDRACER) >& /usr/src/makeworld.log &

      Unfortunately, I've only given you a fish, not taught you how to fish, but it really just takes a little poking around to figure out what you need to do. Look at the handbook [freebsd.org], especially chapter 9. Rebuilding world and kernel is less space-hungry than you might think, it seems to take more time than anything. Another good source of advice is the newsgroup comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc

    • cvsup isn't installed by default because to build it from source requires Modula-3 and X libs, neither of which are part of FreeBSD and Modula-3 is fucking HUGE and would add upwards of 30 minutes to the world build time for Modula-3 and cvsup.

      'make world' sounds scarier than it is, mostly for mythical religious reasons. It's not space hungry at all really. A full /usr/src is about 250M which you're likely to have anyway and /usr/obj (where the object files are during a make world) also gets to about 500M.

      The fact that you installed binary packages is not relevant to building the world. FreeBSD is not a package based system (ala RPM, Deb, etc) and thus no portion of the OS itself is installed via a Package. 'make world' refers to rebuilding FreeBSD, not any 3rd party packages you installed so you wouldn't have to worry about them.

      Freebsd.org/handbook is anything but thin on the process, and it's most CERTAINLY not out of date as it was updated to 4.4-RELEASE and 5.0-CURRENT for the recent 2nd Edition hardcopy publication (www.freebsdmall.com) handbook/makeworld.html has full step-by-step directions.

      If you want to understand ports, the best source aside from the Handbook is 'man ports'. There's a man page for nearly everything in FreeBSD. You'd be surprised. Since Packages are just pre-compiled ports, they fall under the realm of the 'portupgrade' and pkg_* utilities. This is academic of course because there's no need to rebuild your packages after a make world unless you just happen to want newer versions of those packages (should new ones be available.)
  • It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: "*BSD is dying" trolls are dying.


    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently IDC confirmed that "*BSD is dying" trolls account for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all posters. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that "*BSD is dying" trolls have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along.


    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict their future. The hand writing is on the wall: "*BSD is dying" trolls face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for them because "*BSD is dying" trolls are dying. Things are looking very bad.



    All major surveys show that "*BSD is dying" trolls have steadily declined in market share. They are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If they are to survive at all it will be among the "hot grits" dabblers. "*BSD is dying" trolling continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, it is dead.


    Fact: "*BSD is dying" trolling is dead

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