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Announcements Operating Systems Upgrades BSD

FreeBSD 5.3 RC2 Released 150

Posted by Hemos from the let-the-candidates-be-released dept.
ValiantSoul writes "FreeBSD 5.3 Release Candidate 2 was just released. This new RC includes an updated network stack that fixes a bug where the system stops responding when under severe network load, the complete disabling of the ULE scheduler due to instability, and other fixes. Originally the FreeBSD team decided not to release a RC 2 however the fixes in the latest CURRENT were important enough to do so. As long as there are no severe problems with RC 2, this will be the last test release until a final one. See the full announcement on the mailing lists."
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FreeBSD 5.3 RC2 Released More

FreeBSD 5.3 RC2 Released

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  • Get with the times (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 01, 2004 @09:48AM (#10685376)
    Whell, FreeBaSeD is only on Version 5.3 - speak to the hand, thats so like 2002 retro - You aren't all that and a bag of potato chips.

    Like whateva, Solaris is on version 8 and Fedora is on 9, Slickware is leading with 10, Gentoo is Gentoo is.... As if I would use something so not invouge. I run this click so I might just use 2003 since it has such highya numba.

    Where is my lip gloss. Don't mess with me. I'm one crazy mo-fo. I once popped a cop cause he wasn't giving my props in Oak town. I've heard that somewhere.

  • This is good. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 01, 2004 @10:00AM (#10685511)
    This is just more proof that the folks over at FreeBSD are committed to releasing nothing that's not at-or-near perfect. For sure, nothing will hold the -RELEASE tag unless I'd run it at home if not in a production environment.

    Personally, I'm happy that they're more concerned with stability than they are with the release schedual. The bugs in RC1 were pretty severe if not overreaching.

    • Re:This is good. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by a_hofmann ( 253827 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @10:40AM (#10685973) Homepage
      I always had the impression that FreeBSD has gathered one of the most professional teams around an open source project of this scale. They focus on delivering a high quality operating system, and that's seemingly the only rationale behind engineering decisions. I like that attitude.

      Maybe that is why it works out so well [freebsd.org]?

    • I've been running FreeBSD 4.x on my web and database servers for a while. I'm about ready to buy some new hardware, and I'd love to put 5.x on it, but after looking at the release notes for 5, it appears that they are urging me not to do this. So I guess I'll go with 4.10 on my new machines. Does anyone know when the 5 branch will be ready? Is 5.3 final going to be it? If so, how many more months before it arrives?

  • Not just another RC (Score:4, Funny)

    by corby ( 56462 ) * on Monday November 01, 2004 @10:01AM (#10685521)
    I am really impressed with the work that went into this RC. GDB fixes, plus work on memory allocations and networking data structures.

    Bravo! I hereby increase my bid to $52,000.

    Sincerely,
    Jeff Merkey

    (Please remember that directing vitriol against the mentally disabled may be a violation of Federal Hate Crimes statues)

  • Obligatory BSDis dying troll (Score:5, Funny)

    by nels_tomlinson ( 106413 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @10:09AM (#10685615) Homepage
    [man with cart] Bring out yer dead!
    [Man with OS slung over his shoulder] 'ere's one!
    [FreeBSD, slung over shoulder] But I'm not dead yet!
    [Man with cart] 'e sez e's not dead.
    [Man with OS] Don't mind 'im, what does he know?
    [Man with cart] Well ... I can't take 'im 'til Netcraft confirms it, can I now?
    [FreeBSD] Netcraft? Netcraft! Well, that bloody does it!

    FreeBSD jumps off the second man's shoulder and begins to club both men, vigorously.

  • XP? (Score:5, Funny)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @10:09AM (#10685621) Homepage
    ...includes an updated network stack ...
    In other news, Microsoft has declared they have just improved the network-stack of Windows XP, making it more robust under heavy loads....

    • Re:XP? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ulib ( 816651 )
      Troll-joking-about-the-few-restrictions-of-the-BS D -license says
      In other news, Microsoft has declared they have just improved the network-stack of Windows XP, making it more robust under heavy loads....

      Strange... you should be happy, because GNU/Linux can adopt it as well. And it's about time... :)
      What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004) [slashdot.org]
      Quote: "FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

      Seriously... It looks like most of you GNU/Linux users ha

  • does fbsd have good framebuffer console? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i'm using 1024x768 @75Hz (128 columns of text!) and it's a dream for coding in. i don't wanna use X, so only way i'll be happy in fbsd is if i can get big BIG console windows like this. anywhere from 128 to 132 cols is good enough for me.
    (i already checked fbsd web site man pages for wscons, and it looks like 800x600 with 90 cols is the max???)

    • kgi4BSD (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      some time ago there was something happenning about grapgics for the console, hmm let me google...

      http://people.freebsd.org/~nsouch/kgi4BSD/
    • > i'm using 1024x768 @75Hz (128 columns of text!) and it's a dream for coding in. i don't wanna use X, so only way i'll be happy in fbsd is if i can get big BIG console windows like this. anywhere from 128 to 132 cols is good enough for me.
      (i already checked fbsd web site man pages for wscons, and it looks like 800x600 with 90 cols is the max???)

      First of all, you'd need man syscons, not wscons.

      At any rate, I'm currently using 132x43 character mode on my console, which works fine as logn as you have a graphics card with a vesa 1.2 bios or better, and have enabled vesa support (either by compiling it into your kernel or by loading the vesa kernel module)

      800x600 (with 90 text collums) seems to be the maximum for graphics mode with syscons, but for character mode it seems to rather support anythign that your vesa bios supports.

      Som if all you need is a 132x43 text mode screen, then yeah, that will work fine. If you need graphics mode, checkout the manpages on vga, vgl and vesa and see if that woulf work for you.
  • What is the best way to upgrade to this version? Download the CDs? Through the ports? Do you have some sort of strange method that no one else has heard of?

    • Re:FreeBSD Newbie here (Score:4, Informative)

      by Moloch666 ( 574889 ) <jeff-junk@tdTWAINs.net minus author> on Monday November 01, 2004 @10:21AM (#10685760) Journal
      What is the best way to upgrade to this version? Download the CDs? Through the ports? Do you have some sort of strange method that no one else has heard of? The answer falls under then 3rd option. Although every FreeBSD user should have heard of it. It's called cvsup. Take a look at the FreeBSD handbook. It will describe the process much better than I ever could. Look for the heading "make world".
      • Thank you very much for your help. Much appreciated sir.
        • Np, glad to help

          I should add, that I found the tag specification somewhat confusing. The default is ".", which is current. Current is now FreeBSD-6.0 probably very unstable.

          Your tag should be tag=RELENG_5_3, although it may need to be tag=RELENG_5. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that for the most up to date 5.3 you need tag=RELENG_5_3. This will make sense after reading the make world section of the handbook.

          I did google on the make world process for clarity. You may come across a site "BSDVault" t

    • Re:FreeBSD Newbie here (Score:4, Informative)

      by a_hofmann ( 253827 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:01AM (#10686222) Homepage
      Have a look at Synchronizing Your Source [freebsd.org] and the next chapter, Rebuilding world [freebsd.org] in the FreeBSD handbook. The whole procedure of a source upgrade is explained there.

      You should settle to this method as it is the preferred way of keeping your system up-to-date, wether on updating between releases or incooperating security or maintainance updates from the respective RELEASE branches.

      Basically after having your source updated to the latest RELENG_5_3 branch, typically via cvsup(1), it consists of the following steps:

      # make buildworld
      # make buildkernel
      # make installkernel
      # reboot

      single mode:

      # mergemaster -p
      # make installworld
      # mergemaster
      # reboot
      It is very straight-forward, still be sure to read about the details in the handbook.

      • Note that the above procedure is only recommended for upgrading minor versions (e.g 5.x to 5.x). Do not use this to upgrade 4.x to 5.x. To upgrade from 4.x, the recommended method is to backup, install 5.x and restore - this allows you to take advantage of UFS2.

    • Re:FreeBSD Newbie here (Score:4, Informative)

      by kirkjobsluder ( 520465 ) <kirk@job[ ]der.net ['slu' in gap]> on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:45AM (#10686873) Homepage
      I really need to disagree with the previous two posters on this. The early adopter's guide [freebsd.org] recommends backup-install-restore rather than cvsup from source.
      • Actually, a FreeBSD newbie probably shouldn't be running 5.3-RC2 at all. A newbie should be running 4.x. The RC releases exist so that hard-core users can bang on it and debug it.

        But if there is some crucial feature of 5.3 that this person really needs (support for a certain USB device or something), I agree, download the ISOs and backup-install-restore.

  • Freedbsd-Stable? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by krammit ( 540755 )
    I remember a few months ago that 5.3 was the target for making the 5.X branch the official "stable" branch. Any word on when 5.X goes stable if not with this release?

  • anyone remember 2.4.0-2.4.10? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:18AM (#10686442)
    Let's not get too huffy here about ULE. Anyone care to bring remember the ugly VM wars of the early 2.4 series? Even now there's still plenty of LKM traffic over scheduling in the 2.6 kernel. The unfortunate thing is that I think a bunch of the work is for naught. I believe Dragonfly (at least in concept) will end up being much more scalable. If that proves true, I'd hope that down the road they re-merge to focus resources on IMHO is the most robust of the FOSS OS's.

  • OT but I had to share! (Score:4, Funny)

    by crazyboie ( 583634 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:29AM (#10686606)
    My daemon pumpkin http://www.joyrank.com/misc/daemon-finish-20041028 .jpg [joyrank.com] I did Tux last year with a stencil I found on the net so this year I made the daemon one from scratch. Kinda rough in a few places but overall, I was pretty satisfied with the results. Cheers,
    • I did Tux two years ago. Last year I carved ;) in my pumpkin. This year I skipped the computer theme and somebody stole my pumpkin. Next year I think I am going to carve some binary, but have not decided what yet. Any suggestions?
  • I once tried to install FreeBSD on my system. I couldn't get X and many other apps to work. And installation wasn't very "pleasant". So, here is my question: Can an ordinary user like me use FreeBSD?
    • I know a 16yo girl who installed FreeBSD on her own. She loves using Firefox, Gaim, and AbiWord.

      She even tells me about how she uses Yahoo chat rooms to get FreeBSD support (when I'm not around).
    • Anyone who can read the handbook [freebsd.org] should be able to install it and use it. The problem is that not many people (including myself a year ago) want to spend the time to RTFM. The handbook really is well put together though. FreeBSD certainly isn't as "easy" to get up and running as Fedora or Mandrake, but it's certainly possible. Only severe issue I've had with FreeBSD lately is with my Compaq laptop. If you want to run FreeBSD, avoid Compaq like the plaque. I can't even boot into the installer (it shuts

  • TEST IT PEOPLE - PLEASE DL the CD! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by QuietRiot ( 16908 ) <cyrus.80d@org> on Monday November 01, 2004 @01:14PM (#10688445) Homepage Journal
    Get the CD and install on a spare machine. BEAT THE HELL OUT OF IT.

    If you find a bug you will be a GOD in the eyes of those that want to run 5.3 production-style.

    I vote wait untill that release is FULLY READY TO GO OUT THE DOOR. 5.3 is critical to further acceptance of FreeBSD, further commercial funding support, further legitimacy of the platform, and confidence in the developers/Release Engineering team.

    If you need it now, run the RC. Unless a TON of people need 5.3 NOW, the developers should feel no pressure to get it out the door. They should feel pressure to get testers to find problems. They should feel pressure to find people that like inflicting damage on a running OS. Find those twisted individuals and give them a RC CD and a keyboard. Hear their stories.

    Make it good as the worlds's eyes will be upon this relase and any further potential problems. RC2 should be fixing a much smaller list of bugs.

    WE'RE STILL PLAYING AROUND WITH SCHEDULER CHOICES!! ???? I'd suggest more RCs. Blank CD-R media is CHEAP. Corporate downtime when bugs are discovered 1.5 weeks out from a release IS NOT!

    Test Test Test Test Test. Beat the hell out of it - portinstall all ports. Rock the box and see how she holds. Try and crash it. Pound it from the network. Pull a live disk. JMP to a block of random bytes. Run 200 instances of your JVM. Start up as many desktop applications as possible. Try and kill your install and see how Beastie holds.....

    5.3 is going to ROCK but SHOULD NOT BE RUSHED!!! If it needs time, by all means give RE-team time!

    I hope we don't have to see a 5.3.1 release.

    Perhaps the developers should require a certain variation in hardware platforms tested on or a given number of people to run it with no problems before final release.

    (I don't run FreeBSD in a corporate environment or profess to know much about RE's testing process. Just trying to get in people's heads that extreme testing WILL make this release a HUGE success.)
    • Sorry about the yelling people.

      I LOVE FreeBSD!!! I really can't wait for this release. Actually I can (perhaps unlike others), but it does excite me quite a bit. Just wish I had a MP machine on which to play....

      Developers. Developers. Developers. You're all beautiful. Your work is wonderful. You code so we don't have to. Kudos, thanks, and appreciation to the Nth!

      Same goes for the testers. FreeBSD wouldn't be where it is today if it weren't for you installing untested code on your machines and
    • Hm, OK. The last week I've tried Fedora Core 3 Test 3, Mandrake 10.1 Official, and SimplyMEPIS 2004.04, and found bugs in all of them within minutes of use (and severa. Just hope that your bug feedback system user registration email doesn't get rated "definitely spam" (like it did with Mandrake).

      I might not be an expert, but I know a bug when I see one...
  • I think it was an excellent idea to delay the release and revert to the older scheduler. I installed RC1, and am using it now for ordinary day to day desktop stuff. In general it seems to be an excellent release, but within the first week of use, I experienced problems that seem to be problems with the scheduler. It's only a sample size of one, admittedly, but I think it indicates that the problems with the scheduler were not esoteric ones that would only bother a few people.
    • The difference in RC2 was not to change back to using SCHED_BSD - this was done quite some time ago when the issues with SCHED_ULE became apparent.

      The problem was that a lot of people were still using SCHED_ULE in their kernel configs and getting mysterious problems. Developers were spending a lot of time trying to figure out what the problem was before the user owned up to using ULE which was known to be broken.

      The change for RC2 was to forcibly break ULE so that if a user attempts to compile a kernel wi
      • Hnm... this [google.com] is what I was referring to. I was not using any nonstandard settings, and this was new behavior after upgrading from 5.2 to 5.3. The reply from Kris Kennaway made me think that it was a known issue that was probably fixed after RC1 came out. Maybe I'll download and install RC2, see if the problem is indeed fixed, and report it if it's not.

  • XMMS skipping? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Do the ULE scheduler problems have anything to do with XMMS skipping while doing certain other things? For example, every time I mouse over a link in Firefox, XMMS skips a bit even though Firefox is niced at +10. This is really the only thing that still bugs me about my new 5.3 RC1 install...

  • Outstanding (Score:3)

    by nsayer ( 86181 ) <nsayer@MENCKENkfu.com minus author> on Monday November 01, 2004 @07:01PM (#10694414) Homepage
    I just upgraded my desktop at work to RC2 from 5.2.1. The hiccups were minimal (remove PFIL_HOOKS, add devices io and mem, re-download HFS support), and for my trouble my problems getting my iPod to talk to the USB 2.0 interfaces have all gone away. While I was at it, I added LDAP NSS and PAM support ports and am now a very happy camper! Kudos to everyone involved.

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