From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 17 17:22:25 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C92116A402 for ; Thu, 17 May 2007 17:22:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: from mail-gw0.york.ac.uk (mail-gw0.york.ac.uk [144.32.128.245]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D2C113C447 for ; Thu, 17 May 2007 17:22:24 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: from mail-gw7.york.ac.uk (mail-gw7.york.ac.uk [144.32.129.30]) by mail-gw0.york.ac.uk (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id l4HGp8NN001106; Thu, 17 May 2007 17:51:08 +0100 (BST) Received: from buffy-128.york.ac.uk ([144.32.128.160] helo=buffy.york.ac.uk) by mail-gw7.york.ac.uk with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HojC0-0003kh-E3; Thu, 17 May 2007 17:51:08 +0100 Received: from buffy.york.ac.uk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by buffy.york.ac.uk (8.14.1/8.14.1) with ESMTP id l4HGp7Zx088734; Thu, 17 May 2007 17:51:08 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: (from ga9@localhost) by buffy.york.ac.uk (8.14.1/8.14.1/Submit) id l4HGp7Pm088733; Thu, 17 May 2007 17:51:07 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) X-Authentication-Warning: buffy.york.ac.uk: ga9 set sender to gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk using -f From: Gavin Atkinson To: Chris In-Reply-To: <3aaaa3a0705170830g46487cc7occc8a51b82a9118b@mail.gmail.com> References: <3aaaa3a0705170830g46487cc7occc8a51b82a9118b@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 17:51:07 +0100 Message-Id: <1179420667.87418.22.camel@buffy.york.ac.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.6.1 FreeBSD GNOME Team Port X-York-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-York-MailScanner-From: gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: fast rate of major FreeBSD releases to STABLE X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 17:22:25 -0000 On Thu, 2007-05-17 at 16:30 +0100, Chris wrote: > Stuff I would love to see in FreeBSD 7.x (CURRENT) before 7.0 release > which looks like it isnt going to happen [snip] > More hardware support - FreeBSD still has poor hardware support when > compared to other OS's, in particular vendors such as realtek nics. Do you actually have a card which isn't recognised or doesn't work? I can only see one open PR about an unsupported Realtek NIC, and that is a specific 3 port NIC, which is probably trivial to support. I note also that Realtek do provide FreeBSD drivers for all of their PCI network cards. If you are having problems, open a PR, and include information about the card, a verbose dmesg, and the output of "pciconf -l" at the bare minimum. > A more user friendly installer so datacentres stop been put off FreeBSD. Although work on a new installer is "ongoing", nobody ever seems to be clear what the problems are with the current installer that they are trying to fix. I believe PC-BSD uses a different installer, which is the current candidate, although I personally prefer the current one. I'm guessing a new installer never make everybody happy. > Work on the network code so STABLE stops panicing and lagging on low > amounts of ddos that 4.x barely flexed at and even 5.x could cope > with. Again, 6.x is proving very stable for a *lot* of people. What sort of problems are you seeing? URLs to posts on mailing lists would be fine. As there are so many people using 6.x for huge work loads, it may well be something specific to your workload/hardware etc, in which case you may well have to help with debugging. > The recent ports freeze has also concerned me, this is the longest > ports freeze I have witnessed since I started using FreeBSD years ago > and its for a desktop element of the os, does it matter if servers > running FreeBSD have to remain on vulnerable versions of ports as a > result of this? Kris has already responded to this. > The viability of upgrading FreeBSD to a new major version at least > every 2 years is small, can choose not to upgrade as security patches > will exist but ports only get supported on the latest STABLE tree now > and I expect 5.x development will be killed off like 4.x was when 7.0 > hits release. [ I speak purely as a FreeBSD user myself, here] Information on EoLs of various releases is available at http://www.freebsd.org/security/ - showing that support for both both 5.5 and 6.1 extend over a year from now. Given the current plan is to release 7.0 some time this year, there's at least 6 months of overlap there. And given 6.3 isn't yet released, and "will be supported by the Security Officer for a minimum of 12 months after the release", there will be a fair amount of overlap there too. And I wouldn't be surprised if at least one more 6.x release is designated an "extended support" release. > Why cant 7.0 be released when more long awaited features are added and > then not as STABLE tree only as CURRENT (like 5.0 was) and if 7.0 is > considered stable then 7.1 can be STABLE branch. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/version-guide/past-schedules.html explains this far better than I ever could. > I consider 6.2 to be > the first release in 6.x branch close to proper stability and that > release is under a year old before a new major release is due. Again, without knowing what issues you saw, I'm not sure anyone can answer that. The only real issues I am aware of with 6.0/6.1 that weren't fixed with errata patches were either quota, IPv6 or CARP related. > Please dont flame me as I am a avid FreeBSD server user not a fan of > linux so not been a troll this is a serious post. Please don't take my response as a flame :) Gavin