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Operating Systems Unix BSD

FreeBSD 6.2 Released To Mirrors 168

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."
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FreeBSD 6.2 Released To Mirrors

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  • Availability (Score:5, Informative)

    by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @12:24AM (#17609506) Homepage
    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: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't have any cds, why can they not put up a dvd image with all three cds on it? :(
      • Re:Availability (Score:4, Informative)

        by Barny ( 103770 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @01:12AM (#17609844) Journal
        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 (Score:4, Informative)

      by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @01:49AM (#17610060) Homepage
      FreeBSD 6.2 has now been announced [freebsd.org].
    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Slashdot jumped the gun as usual...."

      Yeah, now we can't bitch that it's a dupe!!

      Some people are never pleased.
  • But wait..... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mlwmohawk ( 801821 )
    Wasn't development supposed to be delayed or stalled because of license issues?
  • 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.
  • by Bluesman ( 104513 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @12:46AM (#17609670) Homepage
    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.
    • I just finished my embedded system based on 6.1. ding. ding. Serenity now!
    • Re:Ha! I did it! (Score:4, Informative)

      by linguae ( 763922 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @01:32AM (#17609988)

      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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Noooo.!!!! I hate when people recommend STABLE. Use 6.2-RELEASE and then update with security patches. Have you read what STABLE is ?? It's not what you think.
      • Interesting. Is it something like Gentoo Portage?

        (Please don't hurt me... I know portage was inspired in some FreeBSD system).
    • Same here, man. I *just* finished installing a 6.1-RELEASE and patching it up to p12, and now I have to start all over again.

      Oh well, I guess that's just the way Beastie likes to torture us sometimes.
    • by pixr99 ( 560799 )
      Don't fret. Go make use of Colin Percival's binary updates system to perform a binary upgrade [daemonology.net]. You'll be running 6.2-RELEASE in no time at all.
  • Upgrading from 4.x (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ShaunC ( 203807 ) * on Monday January 15, 2007 @12:52AM (#17609712)
    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..!
    • i've never done it before, but i've heard from several people that it's not hard, the main thing is to read the upgrade guide and take note of any gotcha's. all it essentially does it replace much of the core OS files and builds a new kernel, then you reboot the system and all things going well, it works. of course the degree of complexity might vary depending on the apps your running and what they depend on, but that's all well documented.
    • by NMerriam ( 15122 )
      But how much from a security standpoint is changing on those systems? You might be better off just leaving them as-is, since the versions of everything on there are old enough that few folks are targeting it anymore. I know our WinNT4 IIS3 server was wonderful despite never having updates available, because IIS3 didn't have any of the features that constantly get attacked!
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by excelblue ( 739986 )
      This is surely a tough upgrade. However, read the FreeBSD handbook section about updating the source tree, as well as the section on rebuilding world. It should give you a step-by-step guide on how to do a source upgrade (the easiest way to do a remote upgrade). Just ignore the stuff about single-user mode - it may be recommended, but it'll still work fine in multiuser if you are careful (eg. try not to have too much going on while doing the upgrade).

      I suggest you go from 4.11 to 5.5 (RELENG_5_5) first, and
    • by cepler ( 21753 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @01:22AM (#17609902) Homepage Journal
      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).
      • Those kinds of upgrade problems are very subtle. I have a FreeBSD box with filesystem continuity back to 1994 (I think it was 1.1 or 1.1.5 when I installed). At some point sysctl moved from /usr/sbin to /sbin and for more than a year I just thought sysctl was oddly broken, when really I just had one that did not match my kernel in my path.

        Just a warning for those thinking, "how bad could it be??"
        • by Fweeky ( 41046 )
          FreeBSD has a catalog of obsoleted files to clean out cruft like that now; make targets check-old, delete-old and delete-old-libs:

          -# grep sysctl /usr/src/ObsoleteFiles.inc
          OLD_FILES+=usr/sbin/sy sctl
    • You'll have to recompile all ports after the upgrade.
      I'd also be really careful with mergemaster.
      Much of /etc changed between 4.x and 5.x
      Maybe tar up /etc, /usr/local/etc and /var before doing the upgrade just in case.
      • You'll have to recompile all ports after the upgrade.
        You won't if you build 6.2 with the FreeBSD 4.x compatibility option. I think this is still on by default, but I'd have to check to be sure.
        • Yep.. forgot all about this switch in the kernel.. It's on by default.

          options COMPAT_FREEBSD4 # Compatible with FreeBSD4

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MadAhab ( 40080 )
      Yeah, I called up the datacenter dudes and asked for an upgrade from 5.3 to 6.0. From there, remote upgrades have been smooth.

      I know 4.11 was probably the most stable operating system I've ever used, but I'd recommend a wipe and reinstall (and if you have your non-OS stuff in its own partition, of course, it's always easier).

      Of course, it's not necessarily dangerous to stretch out your 4.11 installations for another year or two, if you'll commit to keeping your ported software upgraded, even if via hand ins
    • by parc ( 25467 )
      The biggest thing watch for is the / partition. In 4.x, it defaulted to a tiny partition. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near big enough for a 5.x/6.x /.

      The other big gotcha -- and something that eventually caused me to drop FreeBSD -- is that large drives are not supported on many common controllers. They'll show up as available and you can certainly write to them, but at some point you'll start getting bogus DMA timeouts. The hardware that worked fine in 4.X began failing in 5.X/6.X. The response from so
    • I wanted to say thanks to all who replied to my question. I'm left with the impression that while a two-step networked upgrade (4.11 to 5.3, 5.3 to 6.x) is apparently possible, a ton of things can go wrong, especially if I don't do the upgrade during the proper phase of the moon :) I think I'll give it one shot on a low-priority machine. If it works, I'll replicate the process and document it for others; if not, perhaps having the colo folks do a fresh install to a new drive is the best course of action.

      Tha
  • From: Ken Smith
    Date: Jan 15, 2007 12:29 AM
    Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD 6.2 Released
    To: freebsd-announce@freebsd.org
    ....

    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!
  • ..does it run linux?

    *runs*
    • Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)

      by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation AT gmail DOT com> on Monday January 15, 2007 @03:11AM (#17610438) Journal

      ..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... (Score:4, Informative)

        by heroofhyr ( 777687 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @07:40AM (#17611938)
        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

        • WINE Is Not an Emulator, but rather an "alternative implementation" of an API/ABI, just like "Linux emulation."
    • ..does it run linux?

      Actually, for all practical purposes, it does. The Linux kernel is a bit iffy, but all userland Linux binaries run just fine. The Linux syscall emulation works really well.

  • 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!
    • I read that too. It was pretty creepy at first. I mean, I was a minor when I was first exposed to Unix, but that doesn't mean other young people should do the same. Some just aren't ready, you know?
  • 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.
    • Only if you ignore that FreeBSD is a fork of 386BSD, which is itself a fork of 4.3BSD (or more accurately Net/2).
    • by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @07:56AM (#17612010) Journal
      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.

      • ``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;''

        Of course, Linux was designed for said inferior architecture.

        ``people who wanted a real computer but were on a budget got a cheap 68K machine.''

        Do the 68Ks actually have MMUs? Or are they separate chips in Real Computers? Any MMUs that the 68Ks may have certainly don't seem to be used in Macs...
        • Do the 68Ks actually have MMUs? Or are they separate chips in Real Computers? Any MMUs that the 68Ks may have certainly don't seem to be used in Macs...

          They do as of the 68030. I can't speak for MacOS, but AmigaOS used the MMU a lot for nifty tricks like copying the OS ROM into RAM and then remapping it because it was many times faster.

        • Do the 68Ks actually have MMUs?

          It was optional. The MC68010 was the first chip in the family to properly support one, and they were on-die on some of the later revisions (68030 onwards). Early Sun workstation (anything pre-SPARC) used a 68K, and ran a BSD-derived version of UNIX.

          Any MMUs that the 68Ks may have certainly don't seem to be used in Macs...

          Not quite true, actually. A/UX, Apple's first foray into the UNIX market, ran on 68K Macs and required an MMU. All of the 68030 and 68040 based Macs include an MMU, and some 68020 processor Macs have a 68851 PMMU. For a list of some of the ones with an MMU

  • m0n0wall (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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]
  • by srinravi ( 789262 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @04:14AM (#17610826)

    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.

  • But does it run li^H^H the burninating crusade? [worldofwarcraft.com]
  • by Anonymous Coward
    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 difficu
    • by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @06:56AM (#17611736) Homepage Journal
      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.
  • by petrus4 ( 213815 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @06:37AM (#17611614) Homepage Journal
    ...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.
    • by rbanffy ( 584143 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @09:14AM (#17612422) Homepage Journal
      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.
  • 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?
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by carlcub ( 843533 )
      FreeBSD 6.1 and later should support that network adapter with the nve driver.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
      The BSDs don't work that way. Linux distros are made up of lots of separate parts, but BSDs are complete packages (for some definition of complete).

      I don't know exactly how things work for FreeBSD, but with OpenBSD, it's like this: the OpenBSD team develops and maintains the whole operating system, consisting of kernel, libc, commands, compiler, documentation, X, etc. When you install, you get to choose sets: bsd, main, comp, etc, games, and so on. Some of these are mandatory, others are optional. This allo
    • Building FreeBSD from scratch:

      cd /usr/src
      make buildworld
      make buildkernel
      make installkernel
      make installworld
      reboot
  • 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.?

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