Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 17:46:13 +0200 From: Martin <nakal@nurfuerspam.de> To: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Quality of FreeBSD Message-ID: <42DFC345.10205@nurfuerspam.de> In-Reply-To: <20050721135839.K97888@fledge.watson.org> References: <1121917413.4895.47.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20050721095732.GG52120@stack.nl> <200507212029.47615.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> <200507210850530519.03A3275D@sentry.24cl.com> <20050721135839.K97888@fledge.watson.org>
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Robert Watson wrote: > - ATA problems. Many of these, while a symptom of bugs in the ATA code > running without Giant, were very specific to timing, or divergent/poor > ATA hardware. As a result, they were difficult to reproduce in any > environment but the original reporting environment. The same hardware > might perform fine in a FreeBSD developer's system. Many of these > problems have now been resolved, but some have not. Often as not, the > problems have to do with retrying requests to drives. My system is instable with latest -STABLE kernels, producing ATA DMA errors. I also think that this does have directly a connection to buggy ATA code. It seems it is something more general. > As I mentioned, > we believe the ATA code in 6.x is much more resilient, but right now > what it needs is testing, not merging to 5.x yet. Fixes require just as > much testing as any other change, since a fix for one issue may well > trigger another issue, especially in the world of cheap PC hardware. This is true for me. RELENG_6 is great, but there are still annoying bugs which prevent me from migrating the system completely. I'm using FreeBSD mainly as desktop and I really need bktr(4) to work correctly. Then there is some trouble with ath(4) making my notebook unusable. To put it straight, there is no FreeBSD branch which works well for me since about 2 months. This is frustrating for me, but I try to have patience, because you do a great job and btw, I cannot imagine to use my PCs without FreeBSD. One more thing about "cheap hardware": if you know that a piece of hardware is potentially buggy (I mean real BUGS and not missing support), please publish your opinion, because I will buy hardware FOR FREEBSD, so I avoid major problems. How about test suites for ACPI quality, e.g.? Would it be possible? There are people who spend time to test FOR YOU, you don't need to buy all the hardware in this world. Martin
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