Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
RW Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 00:17:20 +0100 (BST) RW From: Robert Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] RW On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Edward B. DREGER wrote: RW RW Perhaps work on 7 should have been delayed until 5 and 6 were able to woo RW people away from 4 -- or at least not leave valid reasons for people RW wanting to stay behind. RW Right now this MFC pipeline is working quite well, but it's worth keeping in In which case there should be no complaints about *maintaining* four different trees. :-) Small, incremental patches and security fixes are not the large source refactorings/rototills that are a pain to MFC. RW Rather than spend undue effort on 4 and 5, improving 6 and 7 is i.e., I have the same thoughts re the MFC pipeline. Adding major features to 4.x would be a slippery slope, as you described. Once everyone's pet feature was added... voici! 7-STABLE! Eddy -- Everquick Internet - http://www.everquick.net/ A division of Brotsman Dreger, Inc. - http://www.brotsman.com/ Bandwidth, consulting, e-commerce, hosting, and network building Phone: +1 785 865 5885 Lawrence and [inter]national Phone: +1 316 794 8922 Wichita DO NOT send mail to the following addresses: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -*- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -*- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sending mail to spambait addresses is a great way to get blocked. Ditto for broken OOO autoresponders and foolish AV software backscatter. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, Garance A Drosihn wrote: Your 4.x system is not doing to die when we EOL 4.x. We're only saying that it is not going to see any additional work on it in the official FreeBSD repository. Actually, we're not even saying that. We're just saying that it will no longer be officially supported. I anticipate that we will continue to see a gradual smattering of 4.x commits fixing critical bugs and so on, we just won't be covering it in security advisories, etc. That said, I'v eworked hard over the last two or three months to phase out 4.x for my production servers, and was quite pleased with how easily the 6.x transition went on the last few remaining ones. One of the big motivating features for me to move forward was actually audit support, but then, I suppose it would be :-). Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Simon L. Nielsen wrote: On 2006.10.12 10:59:18 +0300, Patrick Okui wrote: One of my servers is colocated in a place on a different continent - which is why I haven't been able to upgrade it beyond RELENG_4. Google turns up a binary upgrade as the only way I can get to RELENG_6. Is this still the case (because the logistics on arranging that are ... interesting) or is there a relatively safe way to upgrade from RELENG_4 to RELENG_6 remotely? I have upgraded a system from 4.10 to 6.2 via 5.5 half a world away just using serial console (well and remote power, but that wasn't needed for the upgrade itself). I did this via buildworld etc. and it was actually quite painless, so it can be done. That said, of cause there is always the risk that something will make it blow up. Note that you have to be careful to follow the guidelines to the letter (see the migration guide which was part of 5.3 or 5.4 docs AFAIR) for the 4.x - 5.x part. Ditto. I upgraded my cyrus mail server and kerberos server from 4.x to 6.x remotely from across the world and didn't have any problems. The main caveat was to include the compat4.x stuff during the upgrade, and to make sure to be thorough when rebuilding ports and packages. I was careful to boot 6.x test kernels on all boxes to make sure all hardware probed, etc, before committing to the update. I would have felt a lot less comfortable without a serial console in-hand, though. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Chris Laco wrote: Just a lurker, and FreeBSD users since late 3.0... From my personal experience of (4) 4.x machines and (1) 5.x machine, all on the same hardware, I've had more problems with my 5.x install than I ever did with my 4.x install. I'm afraid to even look to see if 6.0 will run on it. 6.x is a significantly more refined release series than 5.x ever was, and this is a result of a lot of very hard work. If you didn't like 5.x, you should try 6.x and see how it does for you. Don't assume that problems you may have experienced in 5.x persist. In particular, the whole world of ACPI has matured drastically in the last 3-4 years, which has resolved a lot of issues with hardware probing, etc, that existed in earlier 5.x releases. Part of this is vendors fixing their BIOS's, part of it is improvements in the Intel ACPI CA code, and part of it is adding blacklisting, workarounds, etc, for known BIOS problems. File system performance and stability have gone up drastically, as has network performance and stability. So I would encourage you to re-evaluate in the 6.x world, ideally with the most recent 6.x release available. Undoubtably there will be imperfections, but as I hope the 6.x release processes have revealed, we're working hard to resolve any issues. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Chris Laco [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: From my personal experience of (4) 4.x machines and (1) 5.x machine, all on the same hardware, I've had more problems with my 5.x install than I ever did with my 4.x install. I'm afraid to even look to see if 6.0 will run on it. The transition from 4.x to 5.x was very painful for a number of reasons (both technical and organisational) mainly having to do with trying to do too much at the same time. 6.x was a significant improvement in terms of stability and maturity, and hopefully 7.x will continue that trend. DES -- Dag-Erling Smørgrav - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
At 09:39 AM 10/11/2006, Dan Lukes wrote: Even if no new ports will be compilable on 4.x, even if the old ports will not be updated with exception of update caused by security bug, I vote for delaying EOL of 4.11 I would second that vote. Yes, some of the new enhancements in 6.x are nice to have, but there's something to be said for an older, leaner, meaner, extremely well tested system that just works and consumes less memory and fewer computing resources. Just this week, we looked at the status of 6.2 (still just a bit shaky) and its resource consumption (about 40% greater than 4.11) and opted to build another 4.11 server. This wasn't intended as a slight to 6.x; it was just the right thing to do under the circumstances. I also build embedded systems based on 4.11. I sometimes have to backport subtle kernel fixes myself, but it's worth it. IMHO, The FreeBSD Project should have some mechanism for recognizing the fact that in some cases (especially embedded systems and slower hardware) a really good, solid older implementation is the right choice and is worth maintaining. (And that's no April Fool's Day joke.) To do this doesn't constitute a fork and is of enough value to warrant a bit of developer time (though obviously different developers will take different amounts of interest in maintaining classic releases). --Brett Glass ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Adrian Chadd wrote: On 10/13/06, Mark Linimon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: DragonFly has made substantial rewrites/changes since the fork from FreeBSD. I think to assume that there are no regressions in either stability, speed, or support may be naive. Has anyone tried benchmarking DragonflyBSD against FreeBSD 5.x and 6.x for some of the specific workloads people are reporting issues with? I'm about to do some MySQL benchmarking between DragonFly and 6.1. Should post the results soon on performance, just as soon as i figure out how the hell to use pkgsrc :P ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Edward B. DREGER wrote: Perhaps work on 7 should have been delayed until 5 and 6 were able to woo people away from 4 -- or at least not leave valid reasons for people wanting to stay behind. (Note that I'm more sympathetic than my tone might indicate; I've also gotten into some jams from long release cycles, and know what it's like.) I think this misconstrues the trade-off. That's like saying Work on 5.x instead of 6.x. 6.x is 5.x, just significantly refined and improved. 7.x is 6.x, just significantly refined and improved. There are some improvements that are too agressive to MFC, and those are what will constitute the difference between 6.x and 7.0. For example, there are a set of socket layer stabilization/cleanup improvements that I've not yet MFC'd, and may not do so (they've been in the tree for 6-7 months and appear to be good, but need a lot of shake-out). But many of the changes going into 7.x sit there for a period of a few months to stabilize, and then go into 6.x. Right now this MFC pipeline is working quite well, but it's worth keeping in mind that if we MFC'd all the improvements from 6.x to 5.x, it would simply be 6.x, and it would be easier if people switched to 6.x than have us merge all the changes. :-) Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge What's done is done, though. Rather than spend undue effort on 4 and 5, improving 6 and 7 is the best way to improve the newer branches... which might well remove objections to jumping from 4. i.e., I like 4.x just as much as anyone else, but there's a bigger picture to consider. *shrug* As others have pointed out, if things really are that bad, third-party support makes sense. And nothing is stopping anyone from running NetBSD, DragonFly, or OpenBSD. Or Solaris. Or Linux. Or... [ end bikeshed contribution ] Eddy -- Everquick Internet - http://www.everquick.net/ A division of Brotsman Dreger, Inc. - http://www.brotsman.com/ Bandwidth, consulting, e-commerce, hosting, and network building Phone: +1 785 865 5885 Lawrence and [inter]national Phone: +1 316 794 8922 Wichita DO NOT send mail to the following addresses: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -*- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -*- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sending mail to spambait addresses is a great way to get blocked. Ditto for broken OOO autoresponders and foolish AV software backscatter. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Kris Kennaway wrote: On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 09:59:10AM -0400, Vivek Khera wrote: On Oct 11, 2006, at 6:36 PM, Paul Allen wrote: I think the most likely path of success is, as you say, to make the 4.x userland more like 6.x. For anyone who really wishes to stick to freebsd 4.x for performance, we should refer them to dragonflybsd, which seems to be taking this approach. it was forked from freebsd 4.8 and seems to pretty modern in userland. Well, this is pretty unsubstantiated...it doesn't automatically follow that because they forked from FreeBSD 4 they will retain all the characteristics of FreeBSD 4. FreeBSD 6.x is also a forked 4.x, FWIW :-). Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Jeremie Le Hen wrote: I am all for it. According to this thread, it appears the 4.x branch is still used for whatever reasons, may they be perceived good or bad depends on one's own consideration and feeling. If the FreeBSD Project is going to relinquish RELENG_4 support because of lack of interest from the developpers -- and I can understand this --, it would not hurt though to arrange a place where people still interrested in RELENG_4 could talk together, exchange tricks and patches and so to continue a kind of unofficial support. Although this may appear as a loose and slack support, it is yet better than having nothing, IMHO. FWIW, it's important to remember that what the security officer is doing is not saying that 4.x cannot be supported, it's saying that they no longer guarantee it will be supported. If someone decides to support 4.x anyway, then that's not a problem. This is more about recognizing the reality that the vast majority of new work on FreeBSD is on the 7.x and 6.x branches. If there are people who want to continue to support 4.x, there's nothing preventing from doing that. Existing FreeBSD developers will still be able to commit to the 4.x branches. We will still be able to give commit access to people who turn up who show consistent contributions (and all the normal criteria for a new committer) and are interested in continuing to support 4.x. This is a community project: if people turn up to do the work, and do it well, we're not going to stop them. Official support has to do with recognizing that we're doing a good job in supporting something, and that the hands are there to do it. What we're trying to avoid here by announcing EOL's is people incorrectly assuming that something that is not being supported is being supported. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Garance A Drosihn napsal/wrote, On 10/12/06 04:09: Your 4.x system is not doing to die when we EOL 4.x. We're only This is an open-source project. If it really is as easy to support 4.x with security fixes as you think it is, then you (all of you Yes, I'm ready to self-support the 4.x for me. In the fact, the problem is not in system, the problem is in ports, but I used few ports only, so it's acceptable. But, maybe for my poor knowledge of english, you misunderstand the point of my think. The main problem is - 6.x is still not competitive replacement for 4.x. I'm NOT speaking about old unsupported hardware - I speaked about performance in some situation and believe in it's stability. It has been serie of decisions of commiters and release team that create current situation and all I say is, the resulting situation is not good because we must drop product when worse replacement available only. who depend on a 4.x system) should be able to do that work without help from us (the people running AMD64, ARM, PowerPC, Sparc64, or even just recent i386 hardware which is not supported by 4.x). I fully understand it. But' I'm not sure if there is sufficient amount of users of those new platform in the community. I sayd the commiters prefer to work on new toys over maintaining the previous code (including it's own). I understant the working on new toys is more interesting work than debugging code with not so exact PR in hand only. Despite of it, I respect the sovereighty of an commiter to decide what he want to work on. May be - the project need to adopt commiters of another sort - those who are ready to review old code, repairing bug and polishing. Well - it's off-topic here. I sayd the current situation (which has no good solution) is result of recent decision. I don't want to sound unsympathetic here, because up until just six months ago I was also depending on security fixes for 4.x. But after having two of my personal PC's fried (due to a broken air-conditioner), I have now moved on. I'm also preparing to transition, but it's first time I'm changing better version and thinking I'm upgrading to worse system than previous Despite of anything I sayd, we should thank for the whole team for it's work. I'm sure anybody do all he can. Dan -- Dan Lukes SISAL MFF UK AKA: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
One of my servers is colocated in a place on a different continent - which is why I haven't been able to upgrade it beyond RELENG_4. Google turns up a binary upgrade as the only way I can get to RELENG_6. Is this still the case (because the logistics on arranging that are ... interesting) or is there a relatively safe way to upgrade from RELENG_4 to RELENG_6 remotely? Yes, I do have OOB access to the box in question... -- patrick ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On 2006.10.12 10:59:18 +0300, Patrick Okui wrote: One of my servers is colocated in a place on a different continent - which is why I haven't been able to upgrade it beyond RELENG_4. Google turns up a binary upgrade as the only way I can get to RELENG_6. Is this still the case (because the logistics on arranging that are ... interesting) or is there a relatively safe way to upgrade from RELENG_4 to RELENG_6 remotely? I have upgraded a system from 4.10 to 6.2 via 5.5 half a world away just using serial console (well and remote power, but that wasn't needed for the upgrade itself). I did this via buildworld etc. and it was actually quite painless, so it can be done. That said, of cause there is always the risk that something will make it blow up. Note that you have to be careful to follow the guidelines to the letter (see the migration guide which was part of 5.3 or 5.4 docs AFAIR) for the 4.x - 5.x part. -- Simon L. Nielsen ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Dan Lukes wrote: But, maybe for my poor knowledge of english, you misunderstand the point of my think. Your English is quite good, actually. :) The main problem is - 6.x is still not competitive replacement for 4.x. I'm NOT speaking about old unsupported hardware - I speaked about performance in some situation and believe in it's stability. It has been serie of decisions of commiters and release team that create current situation and all I say is, the resulting situation is not good because we must drop product when worse replacement available only. I think saying that it's a worse replacement is a bit too broad. There are many cases where 6.x performs better than 4.x. However, to say that 6.x is always better would also be too broad (in addition to being demonstrably false). The key (as I stated in a previous mail) is for those that are seeing performance problems to jump in and help make it better. You are partially correct when you say that the developer community is only interested in more recent issues. I say partially because while in some cases it may be an attention span issue as you suggest, it's also due to the fact that as a project we've made an architectural decision to move forward along the path we're on. The way of the future is further down this road, not backing up to the 4.x days. Therefore, if 6.x is not working for you, for whatever reason, it's time to get in the game. Despite of anything I sayd, we should thank for the whole team for it's work. I'm sure anybody do all he can. Thanks! I don't think anyone would misinterpret your tone as harsh, or inappropriate. You've very effectively made your case for why you want support to continue. I hope that those who've responded have made their reasons equally clear for why that is not likely to happen. Doug -- This .signature sanitized for your protection ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Hi list, On Wed, Oct 11, 2006 at 03:15:25PM -0700, Doug Barton wrote: In order to facilitate this effort, I'd like to suggest that a new mailing list be created, freebsd-releng4. That would allow the interested folks to get together, pool resources, and decide what is possible. I am all for it. According to this thread, it appears the 4.x branch is still used for whatever reasons, may they be perceived good or bad depends on one's own consideration and feeling. If the FreeBSD Project is going to relinquish RELENG_4 support because of lack of interest from the developpers -- and I can understand this --, it would not hurt though to arrange a place where people still interrested in RELENG_4 could talk together, exchange tricks and patches and so to continue a kind of unofficial support. Although this may appear as a loose and slack support, it is yet better than having nothing, IMHO. Best regards, -- Jeremie Le Hen jeremie at le-hen dot org ttz at chchile dot org ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Doug Barton wrote: The main problem is - 6.x is still not competitive replacement for 4.x. I'm NOT speaking about old unsupported hardware - I speaked about performance in some situation and believe in it's stability. I think saying that it's a worse replacement is a bit too broad. With no doubt. You are partially correct when you say that the developer community is only interested in more recent issues. It's based on number of PR's I has opened/unanalyzed. My PR's are mostly focused on not so critical problem in ancients part of code. I know standard mantra, of course - no volunteer must analyze my (or anybody's) PRs, there is no doubt about it ... Therefore, if 6.x is not working for you, for whatever reason, it's time to get in the game. I'm already in ;-) I'm using 6-STABLE (and 5-STABLE previously) on some unimportant computers and I'm reposting observered problems (mostly with offer of patch). I'm hesitating to install 6.x tree releases on critical routers mainly as they are on the performance top already (with modern hardware, not an old crap) ... Well, nothing more to speak. Have a nice day. Dan ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Just a lurker, and FreeBSD users since late 3.0... Problem is performance and trust in stability. It's money and hardware independent problem. 5.x has significant performance hit, so we can't count it as competitive replacement for 4.x. 6.1 is second release in 6.x tree. 6.0 has stability problem. The 6.1 is sufficiently stable on average use, but it still has problems in edge situations. The 6.2 become first RELEASE in 6.x tree acceptable for serious production use. 6.3 will be candidate for first trustable RELEASE if there will not be significant problem with 6.2. It's nothing special on major version changes - 3.0 has been buggy, 4.0 has been buggy, 5.0 has been almost unusable. It's common for other systems also - first usable release of Novell Netware in 3.x tree has been 3.11 (after buggy 3.0 and 3.1), but stable release has been 3.12 for example. Oddly enough, I've heard this very sentiment elsewhere this week. Take the post with a grain of salt, but it does touch on the matter. http://use.perl.org/~scrottie/journal/31273 From my personal experience of (4) 4.x machines and (1) 5.x machine, all on the same hardware, I've had more problems with my 5.x install than I ever did with my 4.x install. I'm afraid to even look to see if 6.0 will run on it. Just another $0.2. -=Chris ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Quoting Dan Lukes [EMAIL PROTECTED] (from Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:40:48 +0200): I'm using 6-STABLE (and 5-STABLE previously) on some unimportant computers and I'm reposting observered problems (mostly with offer of patch). The trick is to make some noise and get the attention of a committer. Tell the people you know about problem X and that you have a patch to fix it. This may result in some posts of other people which try your patch and report that it works for them. The probability that someone without the possibility to test this will commit it is higher if there are several people which tell it works, than when the fix is only sitting in Gnats. Bye, Alexander. -- Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands. -- DeGourmont http://www.Leidinger.netAlexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7 http://www.FreeBSD.org netchild @ FreeBSD.org : PGP ID = 72077137 ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Oct 11, 2006, at 6:36 PM, Paul Allen wrote: I think the most likely path of success is, as you say, to make the 4.x userland more like 6.x. For anyone who really wishes to stick to freebsd 4.x for performance, we should refer them to dragonflybsd, which seems to be taking this approach. it was forked from freebsd 4.8 and seems to pretty modern in userland.
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Oct 11, 2006, at 6:42 PM, Dan Lukes wrote: 5.x has significant performance hit, so we can't count it as competitive replacement for 4.x. 6.1 is second release in 6.x tree. 6.0 has stability problem. The 6.1 is sufficiently stable on average use, but it still has problems in edge situations. The 6.2 become first RELEASE in 6.x tree acceptable for serious production use. 6.3 will be candidate for first trustable RELEASE if there will not be significant I'll agree with your assessment of 5.x. The characterization of 6.0 and 6.1 is, IMO, inaccurate. We have one database server running 6.0 in production nonstop for nearly a year now. We have many systems running 6.1 with great performance and stability. There may be certain situations which 6.0 (indeed, any version) may fail in, but that's why you need to test *your* sytem with *your* software under *your* load to certify it as suitable for production. I'm already evaluating 6.2 for our production and plan to move to it shortly after release barring any failures we encounter. I'm trusting that the bge/em driver issues will be resolved prior to release, as those are just too important.
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
ML Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 06:41:10 -0500 ML From: Mark Linimon ML We are currently trying to support 4 major CVS branches. Ughh. Perhaps work on 7 should have been delayed until 5 and 6 were able to woo people away from 4 -- or at least not leave valid reasons for people wanting to stay behind. (Note that I'm more sympathetic than my tone might indicate; I've also gotten into some jams from long release cycles, and know what it's like.) What's done is done, though. Rather than spend undue effort on 4 and 5, improving 6 and 7 is the best way to improve the newer branches... which might well remove objections to jumping from 4. i.e., I like 4.x just as much as anyone else, but there's a bigger picture to consider. *shrug* As others have pointed out, if things really are that bad, third-party support makes sense. And nothing is stopping anyone from running NetBSD, DragonFly, or OpenBSD. Or Solaris. Or Linux. Or... [ end bikeshed contribution ] Eddy -- Everquick Internet - http://www.everquick.net/ A division of Brotsman Dreger, Inc. - http://www.brotsman.com/ Bandwidth, consulting, e-commerce, hosting, and network building Phone: +1 785 865 5885 Lawrence and [inter]national Phone: +1 316 794 8922 Wichita DO NOT send mail to the following addresses: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -*- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -*- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sending mail to spambait addresses is a great way to get blocked. Ditto for broken OOO autoresponders and foolish AV software backscatter. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
KK Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:46:54 -0400 KK From: Kris Kennaway KK The 4.x support policy was announced some time ago and may be found KK here: policy != justification Eddy -- Everquick Internet - http://www.everquick.net/ A division of Brotsman Dreger, Inc. - http://www.brotsman.com/ Bandwidth, consulting, e-commerce, hosting, and network building Phone: +1 785 865 5885 Lawrence and [inter]national Phone: +1 316 794 8922 Wichita DO NOT send mail to the following addresses: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -*- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -*- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sending mail to spambait addresses is a great way to get blocked. Ditto for broken OOO autoresponders and foolish AV software backscatter. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Hi, ML We are currently trying to support 4 major CVS branches. EBD Perhaps work on 7 should have been delayed until 5 and 6 were able to EBD woo people away from 4 -- or at least not leave valid reasons for RBD people Eeehm, afaik 5 is an interim for 6, so 5 should be stopped. I know plenty people (including myself having a 4-box serving nfs; well because asr0 is slow on 5 and 6 is not a option due to rpc.lockd) who have already, plan to or are in the process of upgrading from 4 to 6. Work on 7 should not stop. I think we all have lessons learned from 5. On the other hand: freebsd is work in progress... C'mon guys :-D I think indeed we should make 6 a better 4, just as folks from re@ continue to state. Just my opinion though. Regards, Robert ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 09:59:10AM -0400, Vivek Khera wrote: On Oct 11, 2006, at 6:36 PM, Paul Allen wrote: I think the most likely path of success is, as you say, to make the 4.x userland more like 6.x. For anyone who really wishes to stick to freebsd 4.x for performance, we should refer them to dragonflybsd, which seems to be taking this approach. it was forked from freebsd 4.8 and seems to pretty modern in userland. Well, this is pretty unsubstantiated...it doesn't automatically follow that because they forked from FreeBSD 4 they will retain all the characteristics of FreeBSD 4. After all, they're mostly focusing on reimplementing the changes made in FreeBSD 6 along different (and sometimes the same) lines. Perhaps they'll end up with something better, but that remains to be seen. Kris pgpSMIZvsjWTP.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 05:43:01PM +, Edward B. DREGER wrote: KK Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:46:54 -0400 KK From: Kris Kennaway KK The 4.x support policy was announced some time ago and may be found KK here: policy != justification Yes, and the justification has also been discussed many times. Kris pgpWtx249y5jH.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Doug Barton napsal/wrote, On 10/12/06 21:06: The odds are pretty close to 100% that things will run better with 6.x than with 5.x. Many fixes that have been MFC'ed to 6.x have not and will not be ported to 5.x. It's better to explicitly ask for MFC to selected branches when submitting PR. MFC is not automatic even for RELENG_6 branch ... You should know that best supported branch of FreeBSD is HEAD ... ;-) Dan -- Dan Lukes SISAL MFF UK AKA: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 09:59:10AM -0400, Vivek Khera wrote: For anyone who really wishes to stick to FreeBSD 4.x for performance, we should refer them to dragonflybsd, which seems to be taking this approach. It was forked from FreeBSD 4.8 and seems to pretty modern in userland. DragonFly has made substantial rewrites/changes since the fork from FreeBSD. I think to assume that there are no regressions in either stability, speed, or support may be naive. Their changes may or may not be improvements, but it doesn't necessarily mean that moving will be painless (note: they no longer use ports, and instead use pkgsrc, so users who are migrating are going to have some work to do). As always, individual users considering migration will have to do extensive testing to see which one best works for them. Therefore, I would rather not see us make the recommendation use DragonFly. I would rather see people concentrate on making 6.X have better stability, features, and performance. After all, the early releases of 4.X were (from what I've heard) somewhat rough in those areas, as well. As for the related idea of dropping support for 5.X, the current secteam support schedule shows 5.3 and 5.4 support ending October 31st. (Hopefully everyone has already moved off 5.3 long ago). This leaves only 5.5 which is shown as having secteam support until May 31, 2008. (Everyone will concede that 5.X was an, um, transitional period and/or learning experience.) If any users are interested are still preferring 5.5 to 6.1 and the upcoming 6.2, we should probably try to find that out before we devote a lot of developer resources to supporting it ... mcl ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On 10/13/06, Mark Linimon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: DragonFly has made substantial rewrites/changes since the fork from FreeBSD. I think to assume that there are no regressions in either stability, speed, or support may be naive. Has anyone tried benchmarking DragonflyBSD against FreeBSD 5.x and 6.x for some of the specific workloads people are reporting issues with? I'll try to get around to benchmarking TCP socket transaction throughput (connect()/accept(), read/write, close() as FreeBSD 6 and Linux-2.6 systems seem to spend quite a large percentage of CPU time creating and tearing down TCP sockets for some reason. No, I haven't yet done any kernel profiling, this is just from measured transaction rates from userland. Adrian -- Adrian Chadd - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Hi, On Sun, Oct 01, 2006 at 12:30:22AM -0700, FreeBSD Security Officer wrote: Users of FreeBSD 4.11 systems are also reminded that that FreeBSD 4.11 will reach its End of Life at the end of January 2007 and that they should be making plans to upgrade or replace such systems. Though I admit RELENG_4 is getting dusty, it is not rusty. I believe it is still used in many places because of its stability and performance. For instance, according to Julian Elischer's posts, it seems he is still working on it. Is it envisageable to extend the RELENG_4's and RELENG_4_11's EoL once more ? Thank you. Regards, -- Jeremie Le Hen jeremie at le-hen dot org ttz at chchile dot org ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Hello!
On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, Jeremie Le Hen wrote:
Though I admit RELENG_4 is getting dusty, it is not rusty. I believe it
is still used in many places because of its stability and performance.
For instance, according to Julian Elischer's posts, it seems he is still
working on it.
Is it envisageable to extend the RELENG_4's and RELENG_4_11's EoL once
more ?
Yes, I'm also voting for it. This support may be limited to
remote-exploitable vulnerabilities only, but I'm sure there are many old
slow routers for which RELENG_4 - 6 transition still hurts the performance.
RELENG_4 is the last stable pre-SMPng branch, and (see my spring letters,
Subject: RELENG_4 - 5 - 6: significant performance regression)
_very_ significant UP performance loss (which has occured in RELENG_4 - 5
transition) still isn't reclaimed. So I think it would be wise to extend
{ RELENG_4 / RELENG_4_11 / both } [may be limited] support.
Sincerely, Dmitry
--
Atlantis ISP, System Administrator
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nic-hdl: LYNX-RIPE
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Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Though I admit RELENG_4 is getting dusty, it is not rusty. I believe it is still used in many places because of its stability and performance. [...] Is it envisageable to extend the RELENG_4's and RELENG_4_11's EoL once more ? Yes, I'm also voting for it. I realize that resources to keep chasing this stuff are in limited supply, but if you solicit the opinion of the community, I'd bet that more people would rather see 4.x support continue than 5.x support. I know that it would be a violation of the stated policy, but I think that supporting 4.x and 6.x over the next year would benefit way more people than the current plan of supporting 5.x and 6.x and eol'ing 4.x. just a thought... -Jason -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (FreeBSD) Comment: See https://private.idealab.com/public/jason/jason.gpg iD8DBQFFLRDXswXMWWtptckRApQ/AJ9ocwgBjCKGG8E9/Uml4T9Da/wFlwCeLfiS kzo7WphIVjOVDg+fh5tbuP4= =ezVj -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
I realize that resources to keep chasing this stuff are in limited supply, but if you solicit the opinion of the community, I'd bet that more people would rather see 4.x support continue than 5.x support. I know that it would be a violation of the stated policy, but I think that supporting 4.x and 6.x over the next year would benefit way more people than the current plan of supporting 5.x and 6.x and eol'ing 4.x. Yes, fully agreed. I'd much rather have longer support for 4.x than 5.x. We still have lots of machines running 4.11 here. Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On 10/11/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I realize that resources to keep chasing this stuff are in limited supply, but if you solicit the opinion of the community, I'd bet that more people would rather see 4.x support continue than 5.x support. I know that it would be a violation of the stated policy, but I think that supporting 4.x and 6.x over the next year would benefit way more people than the current plan of supporting 5.x and 6.x and eol'ing 4.x. Yes, fully agreed. I'd much rather have longer support for 4.x than 5.x. We still have lots of machines running 4.11 here. Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] I fully agree with the delay in the 4x EOL. I know many people (including myself) who still run 4.x in dead end hardware for home firewalls/gateways and several other services that run in low, low end hardware. 4.x still has reasons to live for quite a while :) Best regards -- Alexandre Vieira - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Jeremie Le Hen wrote: Hi, On Sun, Oct 01, 2006 at 12:30:22AM -0700, FreeBSD Security Officer wrote: Users of FreeBSD 4.11 systems are also reminded that that FreeBSD 4.11 will reach its End of Life at the end of January 2007 and that they should be making plans to upgrade or replace such systems. Though I admit RELENG_4 is getting dusty, it is not rusty. I believe it is still used in many places because of its stability and performance. For instance, according to Julian Elischer's posts, it seems he is still working on it. Weeell, we (Ironport) just moved to 6.1 but my previous employer (Vicor) is still using it. Is it envisageable to extend the RELENG_4's and RELENG_4_11's EoL once more ? Thank you. Regards, ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
At 8:42 AM -0700 10/11/06, Jason Stone wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Though I admit RELENG_4 is getting dusty, it is not rusty. I believe it is still used in many places because of its stability and performance. [...] Is it envisageable to extend the RELENG_4's and RELENG_4_11's EoL once more ? Yes, I'm also voting for it. I realize that resources to keep chasing this stuff are in limited supply, but if you solicit the opinion of the community, I'd bet that more people would rather see 4.x support continue than 5.x support. While this is an interesting idea, please realize that if we are supporting 6.x (and we are!), then it is much less work to also support 5.x than it is to support 4.x instead of 5.x. The effort for one is not the same as the effort for the other. But I do agree that this is an interesting idea. In a different message, Dan Lukes wrote: Even if no new ports will be compilable on 4.x, even if the old ports will not be updated with exception of update caused by security bug, I vote for delaying EOL of 4.11 That's easy to say. But then that security bug will be in an old version of openssh, and to fix it you'll need to update *both* openssh and openssl, and to compile openssl you'll need a newer version of, oh, some compiler. Or the latest libtool. Or it will assume a variety of changes have been made to base-system include files under /usr/include/**.h. (Note that I face this very issue with a variety of old Solaris and IRIX machines here at work. It's one thing to say Oh, I'll just apply one little security fix, and it's another when you figure out it's going to take you two weeks of solid work to do successfully do that) More to the point, we might not even know there *is* a security exposure in the system you are running. Maybe someone stumbles upon a new exploit in an ancient version of some-component, but everyone running 5.x and 6.x and 7.x is already running the newer version. Thus, we won't even know that 4.x users have a serious security issue which needs to be fixed. You can't just keep voting to say support me forever, and have it cost nothing. Someone, somewhere, has to put up the time and effort to actually do that support. And realistically, that someone has to be the people who are actively running 4.x. Me, I have no desire to run 4.x. I have become too accustomed to a variety of nice features which are in 6.x. I'm also in the process of replacing two of my PC's (because they are having hardware trouble), and once I do that I only have one PC which will even bootup in 4.x -- and that is a 10-year-old PC which I hope to replace before the end of the year. (of course, I'm only one freebsd developer, and I do not claim to be speaking for [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm just saying, more and more FreeBSD developers are actively running on newer hardware, and thus that is where their expertise is...) -- Garance Alistair Drosehn= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteor [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, Dmitry Pryanishnikov wrote:
On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, Jeremie Le Hen wrote:
...
Is it envisageable to extend the RELENG_4's and RELENG_4_11's EoL once
more ?
Yes, I'm also voting for it. This support may be limited to
remote-exploitable vulnerabilities only, but I'm sure there are many old
slow routers for which RELENG_4 - 6 transition still hurts the performance.
RELENG_4 is the last stable pre-SMPng branch, and (see my spring letters,
Subject: RELENG_4 - 5 - 6: significant performance regression)
_very_ significant UP performance loss (which has occured in RELENG_4 - 5
transition) still isn't reclaimed. So I think it would be wise to extend
{ RELENG_4 / RELENG_4_11 / both } [may be limited] support.
I hesitate to do anything to kill RELENG_4, but recently spent a few
days figuring out why the perfomance for building kernels over nfs
dropped by much more than for building of kernels on local disks between
RELENG_4 and -current. The most interesting loss (one not very specific
to kernels) is that changes on 6 or 7 Dec 2004 resulted in open/close
of an nfs file generating twice as much network traffic (2 instead of
1 Access RPCs per open) and thus being almost twice as slow for files
that are otherwise locally cached. This combined with not very low
network latency gives amazingly large losses of performance for things
like make depend and cvs checkouts where 1 RPC per open already made
things very slow.
Bruce
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Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Jason Stone wrote: I realize that resources to keep chasing this stuff are in limited supply, You just hit the nail on the head. The vast majority of FreeBSD developers (including but not limited to the committer community) have moved on. If you (meaning the people that want continued support for 4.x) want to see this supported, you're going to have to step up and support it. I see at least 2 areas that will require work: 1. Ports -- the portmgr team for sure, and to a large measure the port committers, do not have the resources necessary to continue support 4.x. The cluster (read, package building) resources could almost work if 5.x support is totally dropped (which is an intriguing idea), but the manpower to keep things working (ports compiling, etc.) isn't there right now, and would have to be supplied from this community. I like the idea proposed by another poster that requiring perl, openssl, and gcc 3.4 from ports makes most things work. Perhaps something can be added to bsd.port.mk to make that happen transparently? My point here is that the resources have to come from somewhere, because they are running very thin now, and will get much thinner soon. 2. Security updates -- some committers are still interested in this, but not many. Work would have to come from the community to keep key things updated (and of course, the SO team would have to sign off on that effort). In order to facilitate this effort, I'd like to suggest that a new mailing list be created, freebsd-releng4. That would allow the interested folks to get together, pool resources, and decide what is possible. One last suggestion, for those of you who are still using 4.x for performance reasons, perhaps you could dedicate a system or two, and some of your resources, to helping determine where and how things need to be improved. I could make an argument that doing this would actually give you a better ROI than putting work into trying to keep 4.x (and the old hardware it runs on) alive, but I won't. :) Finally, I think it's important to keep in mind that unless the personpower comes from somewhere, official support for 4.x WILL go away. It's nothing personal, it's simply a question of resources. Doug -- This .signature sanitized for your protection ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Well, I suspect that most people with the resources to do what you ask have already moved on precisely because the EoL has been published. i.e., faced with that limited commitment, we had no choice but to (grudgingly and at the last minute) move on. I think the most likely path of success is, as you say, to make the 4.x userland more like 6.x. Without some prior commitment of project resources though, this is unlikely to fly with anyone. e.g., an agreement to EoL of 5.x and do port-cluster builds of a gcc 3.x variant of the 4.x kernel series. I recall that this was done in Dragonfly for a while. Paul ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Garance A Drosihn napsal/wrote, On 10/11/06 21:33: Even if no new ports will be compilable on 4.x, even if the old ports will not be updated with exception of update caused by security bug, I vote for delaying EOL of 4.11 That's easy to say. I understand that it's much more work than just you are on your own - EOL arrived. As I'm not commiter, I'm allowed to submit PR and speak. I'm trying both. This letter is speak part. You can't just keep voting to say support me forever, and have it cost nothing. Someone, somewhere, has to put up the time and effort to actually do that support. And realistically, that someone has to be the people who are actively running 4.x. Me, I have no desire to run 4.x. I have become too accustomed to a variety of nice features which are in 6.x. I'm also in the process of replacing two of my PC's (because they are having hardware trouble), and once I do that I only have one PC which will even bootup in 4.x -- and that is a 10-year-old PC which I hope to replace before the end of the year. I never call for support forever. In advance, I didn't accept other's I has old hardware, unsupported by 6.x' as strong argument for delaying of EOL. It's about money only and if you run important production server, you should be able to obtain money for it's upgrade. Problem is performance and trust in stability. It's money and hardware independent problem. 5.x has significant performance hit, so we can't count it as competitive replacement for 4.x. 6.1 is second release in 6.x tree. 6.0 has stability problem. The 6.1 is sufficiently stable on average use, but it still has problems in edge situations. The 6.2 become first RELEASE in 6.x tree acceptable for serious production use. 6.3 will be candidate for first trustable RELEASE if there will not be significant problem with 6.2. It's nothing special on major version changes - 3.0 has been buggy, 4.0 has been buggy, 5.0 has been almost unusable. It's common for other systems also - first usable release of Novell Netware in 3.x tree has been 3.11 (after buggy 3.0 and 3.1), but stable release has been 3.12 for example. At this time, there are about 224 unclosed PRs related to kern/6.x tree older than three month, 192 of them are untouched (eg. in plain open state). Nobody knows they are reporting serious problem or they are reports of nonexistent problems and they are a sort bug of submitter or hardware or so. IMHO, commiters are hard working on implementing new features, but has no spare time to polish and repair older parts of code. So, at the time of EOL of well tested, fast and stable version we have the only so-so trustable release as replacement. Despite of a money spent to modern hardware. It's just not so good news. Nothing more. I understand that FreeBSD is volunteer based project so nobody can push a commiter to prefer polishing previously implemented features against implementing new toys. Nobody can force release team to postpone next RELEASE until previously reported problems are analysed and resolved or denied (at least most of them). I respect you are upgrading to 6.x because of nice features which you need. But I need none of it on most of our infrastructure server (including those routing to network with more than thousand computer). In the fact, I'm using IPFW2 only and it's available on 4.11 as well, so no reason for 6.x for routers, firewals DNS servers. I prefer performance and stability over new features (it's main reason we selected FreeBSD instead of Linux as main platform for our networks ten years ago). Well. I'm hesitate that my doubt about stability and performance of current and next 6.x release will not make so much friends for me there. So, no more words with exception of thank you for all volunteers. I'm sure they do the best they can. If I can say my humble opinion with no further explanation - the optimal EOL for 4.11 I see about three months after 6.4-RELEASE. Three months after 6.3-RELEASE is worse but still acceptable. It's my $0.02 Dan P.S. Please note the english isn't my native language. -- Dan Lukes SISAL MFF UK AKA: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
On Wed, Oct 11, 2006 at 03:36:10PM -0700, Paul Allen wrote: Well, I suspect that most people with the resources to do what you ask have already moved on precisely because the EoL has been published. i.e., faced with that limited commitment, we had no choice but to (grudgingly and at the last minute) move on. I think the most likely path of success is, as you say, to make the 4.x userland more like 6.x. Without some prior commitment of project resources though, this is unlikely to fly with anyone. e.g., an agreement to EoL of 5.x and do port-cluster builds of a gcc 3.x variant of the 4.x kernel series. I recall that this was done in Dragonfly for a while. The 4.x support policy was announced some time ago and may be found here: http://www.freebsd.org/portmgr/policies_releng_4.html We are not interested in increasing the level of support beyond this. In particular 4.x package builds will stop on 31 Jan 2007. Kris pgpcAJMdjM3Cs.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Lots of knashing of the teeth on this one but lets face it, it had to die sometime. For all the 4.x users still out there (and plenty of them have deep pockets) no reason you can't just hire third party support (possibly even a current developer); hell get together and maybe pool your resources. Thats just how life is for legacy systems, we are all mature enough here in the tech world to know this. No reason you can't sell your CIO's on this when I am guessing they are shelling out millions on other vendors. -Peter ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
At 12:42 AM +0200 10/12/06, Dan Lukes wrote: As I'm not commiter, I'm allowed to submit PR and speak. I'm trying both. This letter is speak part. Understood. But this has been announced for awhile. If the people who actually depend on 4.x can find the resources to support it, I am fine with them doing that work. I was running 4.x on a production server until just about six months ago. But now I am not. I do have a full-time job, and my hobby programming is going to go into the operating system I run on the hardware I own. It isn't going to go into *your* hardware that you want to see supported, for free, for as long as you can keep voting that SOMEONE ELSE must do a bunch of free work just for your peace-of-mind. Your 4.x system is not doing to die when we EOL 4.x. We're only saying that it is not going to see any additional work on it in the official FreeBSD repository. None of us are going to break into your house and smash your currently-running system. This is an open-source project. If it really is as easy to support 4.x with security fixes as you think it is, then you (all of you who depend on a 4.x system) should be able to do that work without help from us (the people running AMD64, ARM, PowerPC, Sparc64, or even just recent i386 hardware which is not supported by 4.x). That's it. The entire rest of your message is irrelevant to the issues here. I very soon will not own any hardware which can even boot up 4.x, so you can be sure that I will not be providing any support for your continued piece-of-mind. If I do not run a given operating system, then I can not claim to support it. That fact is not going to change simply because you vote on it. I don't want to sound unsympathetic here, because up until just six months ago I was also depending on security fixes for 4.x. But after having two of my personal PC's fried (due to a broken air-conditioner), I have now moved on. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteor [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:20:18 +0200 (CEST) I realize that resources to keep chasing this stuff are in limited supply, but if you solicit the opinion of the community, I'd bet that more people would rather see 4.x support continue than 5.x support. I know that it would be a violation of the stated policy, but I think that supporting 4.x and 6.x over the next year would benefit way more people than the current plan of supporting 5.x and 6.x and eol'ing 4.x. Yes, fully agreed. I'd much rather have longer support for 4.x than 5.x. We still have lots of machines running 4.11 here. Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mine too.. I've lots of 4.11 prod server and it's runs smooth and perfect for long.. Hope it can be supported longer, maybe another 2-3 years? :) -- ___ Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
