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Announcements Operating Systems Software BSD

FreeBSD 4.10 Released 269

Posted by timothy from the move-a-decimal-to-get-a-shotgun dept.
lorand writes "After some delay (initially scheduled to be released on May 5th) the long awaited 4.10 version of FreeBSD was released today. It features a large merge of the USB code from the -CURRENT development branch, some conservative updates to a number of programs in the base system and many bugfixes. The detailed release notes can be found here. Use one of the many mirrors if you need to get the ISOs." feargal adds "There are no sweeping changes from 4.9, mostly a consolidation of security and bug fixes. Looking forward, it is also the first in a new 'Errata Branch' which increases the scope of fixes applied. In the past only critical security fixes were applied to the release branch. The Errata branch will include local DoS fixes and well-tested non-security fixes."
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FreeBSD 4.10 Released More

FreeBSD 4.10 Released

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  • Bsd is dying :P (Score:5, Informative)

    by MrRuslan ( 767128 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:22AM (#9265842)
    But the 4.X branch just won't die. Can't wait till 5.x gets ironed out.On a serious note it is good that they maintain the 4.x, It is good stuff.

    • Re:Bsd is dying :P (Score:3, Informative)

      by molnarcs ( 675885 )
      It appaers that there will be a 4.11 release as well...

    • Re:Bsd is dying :P (Score:4, Informative)

      by alexatrit ( 689331 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:28AM (#9265874) Homepage
      I haven't had issues 5.x, really. The only nagging thing is that some of the ports don't always compile correctly. I do believe that's a known/disclosed issue. That's why I've stuck with the 4.x branch.

    • Re:Bsd is dying :P (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:33AM (#9265910) Homepage
      The 5.x branch is mostly ready (indeed, I know many people running 5.2.1 without any problems); when 5.3 is released in a few months, it will be the recommended option.

      The continued maintainance of the 4.x branch is largely for the benefit of those users who -- for good reasons -- are incredibly paranoid about moving to anything new. Users like large banks, for example. :-)

      • Re:Bsd is dying :P (Score:5, Interesting)

        by SillyNickName4me ( 760022 ) <dotslash@bartsplace.net> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @12:23PM (#9268583) Homepage
        I use both 4.x and 5.x

        Interestingly, I currently run 5.x on my main server and 4.9 on my workstation.

        I'm not running 4.9 out of conservatism or anything like that, but simply for the reason that I don't have time to bother with the current issues regarding the nvidia drivers and multi-threading.

        My server runs 5.x because its rock solid and does a good job taking advantage of the smp hardware.

        Once I don't have to bother with the linux-threads port to get a working form of kernel scheduling for threads with the nvidia driver or have to stick to libc_r, I'll switch back to 5.x on my workstation. (and yes, I know I'm stuck with libc_r now when using 4.9, but at least I don't have to bother keeping it that way while recompiling updates and such)

        (oh, and why not use the xfree nvidia driver? because I want opengl for playing enemy territory and the like... not very important really, but good opengl support itself is important for other desktop uses)
      • Yes. The 5.x branch is slower, though, at least on some machines (dunno about SMP ones). GEOM slows down disk accesses slightly, and the extra locks they added to get rid of Giant can seriously slow down firewalling and some other activities. So don't use it to firewall a gigabit connection.

        NB this is not my experience, it comes from the -current mailing list. My -current build is slow, but it has WITNESS and other debug options and these machines don't.

        It would also be nice if they could get mounted
      • Or any user with a live server. To upgrade, you'd have to take the server down, and hope you can get it back up and fully operational in time.

        Does anyone have recommendations for the best way to upgrade from 4.9 to 4.10? I'm guessing that 4.10 will expedite 4.9's EOL. That's about the only reason I'd consider it.

        • Re:Bsd is dying :P (Score:3, Informative)

          by feargal ( 99776 )
          1. Install cvsup from the ports collection.
          2. Upgrade your sources.
          3. Read /usr/src/Makefile and follow the instructions for upgrade.
          4. Before you install the kernel, read up on mergemaster; it upgrades your /etc to the new distribution. Be aware of what you've changed in there in case there's a new version. The obvious ones are /etc/passwd, /etc/group, /etc/hosts, and files in /etc/ssh
          5. Install your kernel and reboot - your downtime will be how long you can run through mergemaster and do an installworld.
        • Does anyone have recommendations for the best way to upgrade from 4.9 to 4.10?

          Cvsup and build from source. The actual time you need to have it out of use can be very small, Eg you can build a custom kernel before starting to do any of the instalation, and it's easy to upgrade multiple machines this way.

          • Will I have to rebuild Java? I can say that it takes awhile on this server. Rebuilding for Gnome 2.6 took a long time as well.

    • Re:Bsd is dying :P (Score:5, Insightful)

      by puzzled ( 12525 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:33AM (#9265913) Journal


      4.x and 5.x are different products. People who know are going to be running 4.x on servers for the next several years, no matter what happens with the 5.x train. All of my servers are 4.9 right now, I have 5.2.1 on a lappie just to get familiar with it.

      • 5.2.1 on laptops suck! the pcmcia support is either broken or not there.

        I need 5.x for the 802.11g card - yet I need 4.x for the WORKING pcmcia code. can't get card to work with either system ;(

        that said, I just completed 100 days of uptime on my 4.9 system that is a dual xeon with HTT (4 cpus - sort of) and its my main vnc server. it 'holds' my desktop so I can remotely attach and de-attach from it. its my SOP for how I work now. and even with heavy use and dual-head vnc (huh? well, it does work!)
    • From 4.10-Release Announcement [freebsd.org]:
      The current plans are for one more FreeBSD 4.X release which will be FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE. It is expected the upcoming FreeBSD 5.3 release will have reached the maturity level most users will be able to migrate to 5.X.

      So probably no more new-feature-development in 4.X. Just keeping it stable.

    • Re:Bsd is dying :P (Score:3, Interesting)

      by diggem ( 74763 ) *
      Been running 5.1 since it first came out.

      --
      meyerdg@swr999:~/bin/xterms
      $ uname -a
      FreeBSD swr999 5.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE #2: Mon Nov 24 08
      root@swr999:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/SPECIFIC i386
      --

      It's been rock solid in many respects, but there have been some (not so) small details which make me want to switch back to Linux.

      - Sound card doesn't work, but that may very well be my own shortfall.
      - Vesa mode console is not supported on my video card, but works like a charm under linux. (this relates t
      • ever thought of updating your system? They're at release 5.2.1 now...
      • about your sound card: you might want to try putting device pcm in your kernel config file.

        building your own kernel in freebsd is a breeze in freebsd. you don't give much info, so if you already know this I'm sorry..

        your kernel config file is /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC. make a copy of it and edit it putting in:

        device pcm

        than in /usr/src:

        make buildkernel KERNCONF=yourconfigfile
        make installkernel
        reboot

        Than see if it works.

      • Re:Bsd is dying :P (Score:2, Interesting)

        by rawg ( 23000 )
        It's the other way around for me. I'm Migrating from Debian to FreeBSD. Mostly because Debian is so unstable/outdated. I have found that everything in FreeBSD just works. I'm running FreeBSD stable with the latest server packages. I can't do that in Debian, unless I want to configure and compile everything manually. The Ports system makes it so easy that I don't think I'll every switch back.
      • If you want to try to get your soundcard working, try "insmod snd_driver". To see if the system found anything run "cat /dev/sndstat". If there is anything in /dev/sndstat, then you should have working sound.

    • Re:Bsd is dying :P (Score:3, Informative)

      by twigles ( 756194 )
      I'm running 4.9 on a laptop and my home router tracking the security branch. Runs great. I built a little Shuttle PC running 5.2.1 and to get my Audigy Platinum 1 sound card working I had to use an unofficial patch [persons.gfk.ru]. And to get my Radeon 9200 video card to run I had to manually upgrade to XFree86 4.4. Don't get me wrong, both these steps were pretty easy and well documented (upgrading X consists of downloading the .tgzs and running a script while making tea), but you have to be ready to do more work than
      • You can run the snapshot available in the ports tree. It's the latest 4.3.xxx prior to 4.4 release. It works with my 9600 and is patched properly for freebsd.
    • Yeah, everytime I decide that I'm going to download a new version of it to have (until I can finish creating my BSD box to install it to), a new version comes out. I have three different versions of FreeBSD right now -- I guess I'm going to wait until I can get this box operational before I actually get a version to install.

      The main reason I want this box is to learn FreeBSD -- one operating system that I have never really messed with. I've toyed around with the BSD shell in Mac OS X a pretty good bit, b

  • Is it just me (Score:4, Funny)

    by MrRuslan ( 767128 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:34AM (#9265921)
    or did all of slashdot run off to download this because its already been more that 5 minutes and no posts....scarry stuff.

  • I like it (Score:5, Informative)

    by molnarcs ( 675885 ) <csabamolnarNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:35AM (#9265931) Homepage Journal
    I like the way they package things - one cd full of goodies (KDE 3.2.2, GNOME 2.6) and one rescue (live) cd for all releases (since 4.8 at least).

    BTW - FreeBSD seems to be included on distrowatch now (good thing!) and there is even a nice review there [distrowatch.com] of the 5.x branch. There are even some nice tips included in the review :)

    • Re:I like it (Score:2, Funny)

      by n0dez ( 657944 )
      make world
      Oops, wrong window!

  • 5.3 scheduled soon (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MancDiceman ( 776332 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:38AM (#9265950)
    We're not a million miles away from seeing them put 5.3 out of the door, which will then become -STABLE I believe.

    Lot of nice things being sorted out in the FreeBSD kernel. I can't wait until the conversation starts about what's going into 6.x

  • For the *BSD nay sayers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CompWerks ( 684874 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:41AM (#9265968)
    Just take a look at "Sites with longest running systems by average uptime" [netcraft.com]

    I swear that I'm no BSD zealot, but that's pretty impressive.

    • I swear that I'm no BSD zealot

      Even in the face of evidence that it helps you keep it up for longer? Your server, that is. Although.. there is help [freebsd.org] for that other affliction....

    • I love FreeBSD, but could those uptimes be because some load balancer/front ends run a BSD variant? Maybe that's the uptime we are seeing, not the actual server's.

    • Re:For the *BSD nay sayers (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ryan Huddleston ( 759930 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @09:09AM (#9266203)
      I, too, was at first impressed when I saw that.

      However, if you check out their FAQ here [netcraft.com], you will see that the uptime cannot be measured that high for HP-UX, Linux or Solaris. Therefore, this really doesn't say much other than the fact that BSD's uptime counter is programmed better than other Unices.
    • hehe, that's just because linux users are so eager to compile and install every new kernel release :P

      seriously, i would be worried if a system was up so long. of course it means that the system is stable, but it also means that security patches to the kernel have not been applied for a *long* time...

      i prefer a secure sytem with an uptime of 2 minutes over and insecure one with an uptime of 2 years. but hey, that's just me...

  • Here's looking to 4.11 !! (Score:5, Funny)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:48AM (#9266019) Homepage
    Hopefully there'll be a 4.11 soon.... anything .10 looks so bizzare. FreeBSD 4.10 reminds me of IRIX 6.5.10. They almost look like typos!

  • Question (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kaoshin ( 110328 )
    I'd like to get FreeBSD going on my laptop but I've had trouble with the cardbus ethernet adapters. Can anyone recommend a 16 Bit PCMCIA ethernet for use with FreeBSD? Too bad there are no sites like Linux-Laptop [linux-laptop.net] for BSD. As far as BSD dying, spend some time dealing with various non-responsive Linux package maintainers and then say who is dead.
    • I have one that works perfectly; it's a U.S. Robotics card but I don't remember the part number. I'll post it when I get home.

      You can't install using this particular card, but the mini-ISO is enough to get it going; then you can pkg_add to complete your install.

      This card may be hard to find, but I don't need it anymore, so an eBay solution is a strong possibility. =)

    • FreeBSD-laptop (Score:5, Informative)

      by n0dez ( 657944 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @10:13AM (#9266803) Homepage
      Wrong!

      This is the most popular FreeBSD-Laptop site. gerda.univie.ac.at/freebsd-laptops/ [univie.ac.at]

      This is a great resource if your laptop is old. www.cse.ucsc.edu/~dkulp/fbsd/laptop.html [ucsc.edu]

      Here you can read an article about FreeBSD on laptops. www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/lapto p/article.html [freebsd.org]

      If you need more FreeBSD resources, then visit www.n0dez.com/freebsd/ [n0dez.com]

      If you've got a 32-bit PCMCIA card on your laptop, use FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE. The 5.x branch supports 32-bit PCMCIA cards. In fact, I'm running FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE on an old laptop without a hitch.
    • You might want to try DragonFly BSD then. It is synched to a lot of what it is 5.x, but took 4.x as it starting point and is moving into a different, in my opinion better (but I am biased), direction. E.g. NEWCARD is present on DF as well as a lot of architecture changes...

  • Paradox (Score:3, Funny)

    by kensai ( 139597 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:54AM (#9266055) Homepage
    BSD is dying, yet they keep on releasing new stuff. Does that mean that BSD is the zombie OS? :P

    • Re:Paradox (Score:2, Interesting)

      by r7 ( 409657 )
      >BSD is dying, yet they keep on releasing new stuff.

      And we keep on using it. There's no better platform for avoiding library skew (dll-hell, rpm dependencies, ...) Even apt-get doesn't compare with /usr/ports.

      We do have fewer and fewer machines running FreeBSD though, because of poor support for Java/Tomcat, lack of iSCSI, and decrepit NFS. Ever try to setup an NFS-IMAP server with 100MB+ quotas and maildir? Can't do it in FreeBSD :-(

      R7
      • ... because of poor support for Java/Tomcat,..
        Kind of pisses me off about Sun's poor Java support of BSD, especially since the original SunOS was a mild port of Berkely BSD. Lots of big people at sun (including Bill Joy) hacked the BSD kernel back in the day.

    • Re:Paradox (Score:3, Funny)

      by molnarcs ( 675885 )
      They have a fine sense of humour too ... OpenBSD's deadly.org was renamed to undeadly.org :)))

  • Conservative updates? (Score:5, Funny)

    by What'sInAName ( 115383 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:59AM (#9266096) Homepage Journal
    some conservative updates to a number of programs in the base system

    But I'm a liberal, you insensitive clod!

  • One Step Ahead Of Time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by $criptah ( 467422 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @09:33AM (#9266389) Homepage
    No, I am not talking about FreeBSD. I am talking about me deciding to perform a 'cvsup' on RELENG_4 last night. Little did I know that I was getting the newest release.

  • A reason to use FreeBSD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cronot ( 530669 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @10:23AM (#9266946)

    I'm a[nother] Linux user, and I wanted a good reason to use FreeBSD. I've installed it twice, but after realizing that I didn't have a good reason to keep using it, as its maintenance was too time-consuming, I ended up removing it. But I still would like to use it, it feels very consistent, and the fact that it doesn't suffer from the "distributions" disease adds up to that.

    Coming from a Debian background, my main complaint (and reason that I resist using it) is that, AFAIK, it doesn't have a large repository of binary packages for installation. I know about the wonders of Ports, but I feel like it is something for users with time and resources on their hands, which I do not have - I don't like the idea of having to wait sometimes hours for something to compile, so I can use it. This time could be better spent actually doing something useful with my computer, rather than it sitting there and compiling stuff.

    I'm aware that Debian has two BSDs ports (NetBSD and FreeBSD), but they are far from maturity right now. For myself, I think that an automated system for installation/upgrading of software packages are a must for desktop installations, so FreeBSD is already out of the game here. For server installations, however, I could go without, although it would still be useful. So I'd like to know if there's a reliable and updated repository (i.e. packages website a la linuxpackages.net, for slackware) that FreeBSD users use to get binary packages.

    Don't take this post as a troll, I'm really interested on FreeBSD and would like to have some solid reasons to use it.

    • Hey, you are wrong (sorry for being blunt). Every now and then the entire ports collection is built on their clusters, providing binary packages. In fact, you don't even have to install the ports collection, you can just go using packages :)))

      In fact, package management in FreeBSD is very similar to apt-get (different commands, same result... a case in point: pkg_add -r kdebase = apt-get install kdebase)

      • Is there a file which knows the URLs to fetch the packages from? One of the things I like about apt is that it knows which versions you have installed and which versions exist "out there" and allows you to update your packages. I hear netbsd pkgsrc has the same thing.

        • Re:A reason to use FreeBSD (Score:4, Informative)

          by molnarcs ( 675885 ) <csabamolnarNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @11:19AM (#9267698) Homepage Journal
          I'm sure there is, though I didn't check it for I use ports. But yes, pkg_* knows which version you have installed, knows if there is an update - well, you can install portupgrade too for more automatic stuff. portupgrade -a would upgrade every port. If you want to use packages in combination with ports, portupgrade -P does the trick. Portupgrade -PP (or portinstall -PP in case of new stuff) will use packages only.

          There are also free binary security updates for freebsd - one of the developers (and ./ user with the nick cpercive) provides them.

          Also, you can specify a remote site when adding packages. The fruitsalad project provides fresh binary kde packages. I think you would install it with pkg_add -r url_to_their_ftp_repository. Someone (who was also a deb user) asked me for an incentive to try out freebsd. I told him this: if you are 100% satisfied and not curious about it, don't try it. Otherwise, I think its a great OS and it is very rewarding (and convenient) - so go ahead! Also, the community is very friendly and helpful (and before I switched, I came from mandrakeusers and pclinuxonline, so you might guess that I had high standards :)) - www.bsdforums.org is invaluable if you want help :)

    • Re:A reason to use FreeBSD (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @10:44AM (#9267211) Journal
      FreeBSD has binary packages. Every port is built into a package (you can do this yourself with make package, but they are also on the main ftp site and some mirrors). The packages are often a day or two behind the source releases (since it takes time to build them all), but they are there. If you use the portupgrade utility then specifying the -P option will instruct it to install from packages if they exist, or ports if they don't. -PP will instruct it to only use packages. If you are not, then you can use pkg_add to install packages.

      I assume that you are not using portupgrade, since you say that FreeBSD doesn't have an automatic update system. Give it a look, it's well worth it.

      I haven't used FreeBSD on a workstation since I got a Mac, but it's a great server OS.

    • Re:A reason to use FreeBSD (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dokebi ( 624663 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @12:42PM (#9268849)
      Someone else pointed out Packages so I'll try to enumerate things I like about FreeBSD:

      1. Stability. The -stable branch (right now 4.x series) is ROCK SOLID. Even with a saturated CPU load, it is responsive and doesn't crash. It rivals commercial unix for stability in high-load environments. I think one can get linux to do this using a very stable kernel (ie, not the latest) or distributions (debian stable). The -current branch is less stable. I've had two kernel panics with it in the last year.

      2. Saner release cycle. With RedHat and others constantly upping their version numbers, it is nice to see branches supported for long periods. 3.x got security updates for a long time, and I know 4.x will too after 5.x becomes stable

      3. Saner Design. Unlike Linux, each release of FreeBSD dictate kernel+base system. Other packages are installed afterwards. Due to this, upgrades are a snap, as each cvsup, makeworld gives you a new release of FreeBSD but leaves your apps alone. Maybe to some people this is bad (KDE not being upgraded), but for servers this is ideal.

      4. Part of No, 3, but oh well. Saner directory structure. Maybe I'm old school, but I *like* having all the base system (bin utils, etc) in /usr/bin and installed packages in /usr/local/bin. So when I do a system upgrade, only /usr/bin is updated. Linux's behavior of putting everything in /usr/bin drives me nuts.

      5. Documentation. man will give everything you want, but there is also the Handbook, which in my opinion is only rivaled by Gentoo's. It is well written, clear, and easy to find.

      So you can see where FreeBSD is geared towards--servers. As such, it is great to set-up, maintain, and run services on it, but it also has downsides, like lack of hardware support (can't have flaky hardware and drivers ruining uptimes). I suggest you try FreeBSD for your server needs, but stick to Linux for more general use, especially if there is no driver support for your favorite hardware.
      • I just downgraded my workstation with FreeBSD to SuSE Linux.

        Its already driving me crazy but I have nice fonts, codecs for xine, and a whole bunch of other stuff taken care of out of the box.

        Already I have discoverd 6 bugs and xine on SuSE 9.1 does strange stuff and core dumps ALOT. That does not happen under FreeBSD.

        Of course I dont have the codecs on FreeBSD either. :-)

        So its a tug of war.

        No way in hell would I trust this release of SuSE on a server. Sadly older redhats and kernels were quite stable.

    • Re:A reason to use FreeBSD (Score:4, Insightful)

      by raytracer ( 51035 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @01:04PM (#9269130)
      I'm a[nother] Linux user, and I wanted a good reason to use FreeBSD. I've installed it twice, but after realizing that I didn't have a good reason to keep using it, as its maintenance was too time-consuming, I ended up removing it.

      First of all, if you are happy running Debian or whatever, why bother seeking other alternatives? If your time is as precious as you say, then why are you considering other alternatives? Honestly, if you can't think of a reason to use FreeBSD, then you probably don't need to run FreeBSD.

      You are right, FreeBSD relies on the ports system and building from source to a greater degree than your typical Linux system. I usually cvsup the kernel about once a month and rebuild the world and kernel. It virtually always works exactly as advertised, and maybe takes ten minutes of my attention. I'm have modest desktop requirements (I don't use Gnome or KDE, in large part because they have large numbers of requirements and are frequently updated with little effect on my overall productivity). I mostly keep up to date on Python, Apache and a few assorted Python modules. The rest, I simply don't worry about keeping up to date on.

      Finallly, f you are really in the mood for binary packages, you should learn about "pkg_add -r".

    • While there are easy ways to install packages (pkg_add -r, as mentioned in another post), I can't really see a reason not to upgrade from source. Take a look at /etc/defaults/make.conf, copy it to /etc/make.conf and make whatever changes you need. Then install the sysutils/portupgrade package. Add a couple lines like so to your new make.conf:

      SUP_UPDATE="yes"
      PORTSSUPFILE="/somewhere/port s -supfile"

      then copy /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile to your "somewhere" dir and change the server listed in t
    • FreeBSD is unique and special.
      These features attracts me:

      - Native IPSEC support. The IPSEC support has been tightly integrated into the kernel and the base utilities.

      - Random IP ID. Make the increment of ID field in IP packets to be randomize instead of 1.

      - Shadow Process. Users except root view their own process.

      All the above featues are included in the source/cvs without downloading any patch, a big plus.

      There are also many other features or pros of FreeBSD. To name a few:
      BSD's secure level, sealth f
      • - Shadow Process. Users except root view their own process.

        Redhat, at least, does this, I know because one of our client's machines got this behaviour when it was upgraded.

        It is also evil beyond belief and whoever thought of it should be lynched, but that is a religious issue.

    • ...rather than it sitting there and compiling stuff.

      You are allowed to go and do something else while it compiles this is not Windows!

      The basic choice is between waiting for it to download, and getting a generic package which may or may not work with the libraries you have to hand etc (consider RedHat RPM hell) and waiting for it to compile and getting something which should use what you have or get what it needs.

      I think that an automated system for installation/upgrading of software packages are a mu

  • BSD 4.1? (Score:4, Funny)

    by twenex ( 139462 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @11:25AM (#9267762)
    Personally I can't wait until the 4.1 NET release to get TCP/IP networking, although I understand that BSD 4.2 will be the real killer release.

  • FreeBSD jails (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @12:44PM (#9268874)
    IMHO, BSD's jail() [freebsd.org] is one of the more interesting developments in recent versions -- at least for an internet service provider.

    For those of you unfamiliar, check it out. It's very much like User Mode Linux [sourceforge.net] and allows running virtual servers within a larger server. Many colocation/virtual server providers (e.g. take [johncompanies.com], your [jvds.com], pick [digitaldaze.com]) use FreeBSD jails to provide low-cost root-access hosts for customers. This really has revolutionized cost effectiveness of large scale hosting!

    There have been various limitations with FreeBSD jails when they first appeared. There were glitches with information leaking across jails. There's a limit to a single IP address, inability to do raw socket operations or even ping/traceroute, and some glitches with a couple system calls used by major applications like Postfix [postfix.org].

    But my understanding is that 5.x seriously improves jail support, especially from a resource efficiency perspective. One of my BSD developer buddies also tells me that he's fixing raw socket support. Keep an eye on the jail feature...

  • bzip2 vs gzip (Score:3, Interesting)

    by theapodan ( 737488 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @12:53PM (#9268990)
    What I like about the 4.x releases is pretty minor, but the package management on the install cd's is still gzip, whereas in the 5.x release its bzip2. Some of us choose to run FreeBSD on older computers with little ram, like 32M, and gzip decompresses almost infinately faster than bzip2. Long live the 4.x tree.

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