Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 10:13:21 +0200 From: Ion-Mihai Tetcu <itetcu@people.tecnik93.com> To: "Darryl L. Miles" <darryl@netbauds.net> Cc: Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org> Subject: Re: pkg_add for 5.2.1 no longer working... Message-ID: <20050220101321.39c8b98e@it.buh.tecnik93.com> In-Reply-To: <42182D3D.1030706@netbauds.net> References: <20050220045721.A55CFCCD800@mail.alpha-tierchen.de> <42182D3D.1030706@netbauds.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 06:25:01 +0000 "Darryl L. Miles" <darryl@netbauds.net> wrote: > Kris Kennaway wrote: > > >Right. Since 5.2.1 is an obsolete release it was removed from the > >main ftp site last year after the release of 5.3 to free up some > >space. Some mirrors may still carry it - look with > >http://mirrorlist.freebsd.org and set the environment variables > >described in the pkg_add(1) manpage to use the alternate site. > > > OBSOLETE! I would understand you saying its not current, or not the > latest, but "obsolete" generally means the version has under gone its > complete lifecycle, it came out, was superceeded (5.3), then those last > installs of 5.2.1 would get their expected system lifetime to run (lets > say 3 years), only at this point would 5.2.1 become obsolete. This has > allowed enough time for all systems to be upgraded from it. You forget that 5.2.1 was a "technology preview" release and as such it _is_ obsolete. > There must be 1000's of systems out there running 5.2.1 right now and > these system (overnight) have already begun the rather steep slope into > unmaintainability. Then, with some exceptions, there are 1000 systems with ..... admins. > The main distribution point of freebsd has deleted a few Gb to recover > diskspace would the main site be best hosted at one of its mirrors ? > > One huge advantage of binary distrubutions (of packages/ports) is that > it makes for easy administration. Not only just to install the package > but if 99% of people will be using that same binary package (over > building it themselves), those 99% of people can use their advantage of > having that specific binary/build tested over a large userbase, use that > advantage to know how and if they are affected by security updates > relating to that build of the package (as any one of them can do the > audit and post results that have meaning to the other users of that > package), use that advantage to report on runtime problems relating to > that build of the package and so on. And one uses all the flexibility and optimizations it can have. > Free BSD's policy seems to read that once a new mainline release comes > out, users now have to start building their own binary ports for their > old version of Free BSD. Free BSD will no longer provide or even keep > around the latest build of each package from the time when the > distribution version was current. I don't expect any back porting of > even upgrading of packages after the version is no longer mainline, but > I would expect the frozen state from the point it was superceeded to > still be available. Many things can be said about FreeBSD but no that we don't care about backward compatibility and related things. -- IOnut Unregistered ;) FreeBSD "user"
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20050220101321.39c8b98e>