Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Sun, 03 Jun 2012 20:45:59 -0500, Stephen Montgomery-Smith step...@missouri.edu wrote: More recently I have had to start using Linux because FreeBSD doesn't have very good laptop support. (All I ask for is a way to configure the mouse pad so that I can switch off tap to click.) See, this isn't very obvious to most people. It took me forever to figure it out. On every other OS you use the Xorg synaptics driver, but on FreeBSD there is synaptics support built-in with the rest of the mouse driver. man 4 psm: Tap and drag gestures can be disabled by setting hw.psm.tap_enabled to 0 at boot-time. Currently, this is only supported on Synaptics touchpads with Extended support disabled. The behaviour may be changed after boot by setting the sysctl with the same name and by restarting moused(8) using /etc/rc.d/moused. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, On 30 May 2012 PM 7:20:31 David Chisnall wrote: This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? one thing which cannot be stressed enough is the responsiveness of FreeBSD under all load conditions. I am surprised how slow Fedora feels occasionally. FreeBSD does not show this behaviour until the load average is double the number of CPUs in a system. I also noticed meanwhile that another big advantage of FreeBSD is the fact they it does not even try to give you the feeling that all is possible with just a click without being able to work on the low level. Fedora gives you this feeling but makes you feel totally lost when the click does not work. This leads to the clear structure of FreeBSD and its configuration. There are not several different systems which might even change from release to release. It is just /etc/. The clear separation of the base system and the applications (ports) is another clear advantage. I would not like to see things which are happening now with Fedora 17 happening with FreeBSD. As I have said before, the only real reason for me not to use FreeBSD on a machine is hardware support. Erich ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
I use FreeBSD because it was the first Intel based unix I tried. A friend of mine suggested I try FreeBSD instead of Linux. More recently I have had to start using Linux because FreeBSD doesn't have very good laptop support. (All I ask for is a way to configure the mouse pad so that I can switch off tap to click.) My main application is to write my own mathematics code. From time to time I try running it under both FreeBSD and Linux to see which is fastest. It seems the two OS's take turns in which is fastest, depending upon which has had more recent development work done on it. Another reason I am forced to use Linux is because I sometimes use Mathematica 8. I haven't got this to work with Linux emulation under FreeBSD yet. When I use Linux, I use Ubuntu. I like very much how things just work. For example, to use a flash drive, I just plug it in. I am sure I could configure FreeBSD to do the same thing, but it just becomes easier to type mount_msdos /dev/da0s1 /tmp as root rather than climb the learning curve. On the other hand Ubuntu recently switched their Window manager, and I hated it on their early versions. They also offered gnome3, and it just wasn't working. So I dare not go beyond Ubuntu 10.04, and I fear the day 10.04 becomes EOL. Having started with FreeBSD before Linux, I feel I understand FreeBSD a lot better. Stephen ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, On 03 June 2012 PM 8:45:59 Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote: On the other hand Ubuntu recently switched their Window manager, and I hated it on their early versions. They also offered gnome3, and it just wasn't working. So I dare not go beyond Ubuntu 10.04, and I fear the day 10.04 becomes EOL. while Ubuntu is certified to run on my laptop, it doesn't do so. So, I installed Fedora and it works. This might be an escape route for you if things go real bad. Erich ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Jun 2, 2012 4:04 AM, Erich Dollansky er...@alogreentechnologies.com wrote: Hi, On 30 May 2012 PM 7:20:31 David Chisnall wrote: This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? I must say that it is a long time ago when I sat at the first BSD machine. The most important feature is the configuration and the update procedure. Things rarely change in a way that users have to relearn. It is also important that it is possible to use a machine and upgrade it only every six or twelve months without facing fundamental problems. What helps there that the user can define a branch (8.x or 9.x) and stick with it as long it is supported. The users are not forced to move to the next version which might introduces some changes the user is not used to it. This allows users to skip one main branch. While it is possible to stick with 8 until 10 is released, it is also possible to move to 9 or even 10. Sticking with 8 reduces the risk to get caught with some problems during the upgrade by some 50% But I have to mention one disadvantage. The ports are in no way linked to the releases. This leads to situations in which a small change in a basic library will result in a complete update of the installed ports. I expressed this already many time here. It would be of advantage if the ports tree would also have tags like the base system itself. Unfortunately this is a massive amount of extra work - we only just keep up with updates as it is. Chris ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, On 02 June 2012 AM 9:14:28 Chris Rees wrote: On Jun 2, 2012 4:04 AM, Erich Dollansky er...@alogreentechnologies.com wrote: But I have to mention one disadvantage. The ports are in no way linked to the releases. This leads to situations in which a small change in a basic library will result in a complete update of the installed ports. I expressed this already many time here. It would be of advantage if the ports tree would also have tags like the base system itself. Unfortunately this is a massive amount of extra work - we only just keep up with updates as it is. I do not think so. At least not for the first step as I see it. Just make snapshots of the ports tree when the release comes out. These snapshots are with the releases anyway. What I did was very simple. I got the ports tree that comes with the release and installed the system back to the release status. Ok, it was some work for me - maybe not for others - to find this tree. A simple link could help here. I do not know if this is just an opinion which is too optimistic. What I know is that all the security fixes which appeared since the release are not in there. If I have the choice between three days or more of compiling and known security holes, I will take the security holes, make the client happy and upgrade after the work for the client is finished. I would not expect that FreeBSD will provide more than this. Erich ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 2 Jun 2012, at 03:56, Erich Dollansky wrote: But I have to mention one disadvantage. The ports are in no way linked to the releases. This leads to situations in which a small change in a basic library will result in a complete update of the installed ports. I expressed this already many time here. It would be of advantage if the ports tree would also have tags like the base system itself. OpenBSD did this for a while, but they gave up because they weren't doing it well enough to recommend it and it did more harm to users to do it badly than not at all. Ideally, you want to get security fixes for all installed applications, but nothing else, in this model. There are two ways of doing this: - Back-port security fixes to the version shipped with the base system - Import the security-fixed version into the stable set. The second option has the problem that you identified: if the new version depends on a newer library, then this cascades and you end up needing to import a new version of hundreds of ports. The first option has a much simpler disadvantage: it requires a huge amount of manpower. Companies like Red Hat can do this because they charge their users a lot for this service. We could probably do this if we had enough users willing to pay for the service, or if we restrict it to a set of packages that do their own security backports upstream. The problem with the second option can be alleviated if we make it easier to have multiple versions of libraries installed at the same time (this is something that the PBI system in PC-BSD does, albeit in an ugly hackish way that could be improved significantly with a bit of assistance from rtld). David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, On 02 June 2012 AM 11:39:16 David Chisnall wrote: On 2 Jun 2012, at 03:56, Erich Dollansky wrote: But I have to mention one disadvantage. The ports are in no way linked to the releases. This leads to situations in which a small change in a basic library will result in a complete update of the installed ports. I expressed this already many time here. It would be of advantage if the ports tree would also have tags like the base system itself. OpenBSD did this for a while, but they gave up because they weren't doing it well enough to recommend it and it did more harm to users to do it badly than not at all. Ideally, you want to get security fixes for all installed applications, but nothing else, in this model. There are two ways of doing this: I would even accept to get the 'release' ports tree without security fixes just to have a system which is up and running fast after I tried an upgrade like what is happening at the moment with PNG dependent ports. As situations like this are rarely needed, I would not push for a fully secured system. Do not see it too complicated what I want. It is really just a system I can fall back at the spot if things got complicated with with a csup the new ports tree just to get something installed. A user who really wants to run a totally outdated system should know what he/she is doing and not complain when things go wrong. - Back-port security fixes to the version shipped with the base system - Import the security-fixed version into the stable set. The second option has the problem that you identified: if the new version depends on a newer library, then this cascades and you end up needing to import a new version of hundreds of ports. The first option has a much simpler disadvantage: it requires a huge amount of manpower. Companies like Red Hat can do this because they charge their users a lot for this service. We could probably do this if we had enough users willing to pay for the service, or if we restrict it to a set of packages that do their own security backports upstream. The problem with the second option can be alleviated if we make it easier to have multiple versions of libraries installed at the same time (this is something that the PBI system in PC-BSD does, albeit in an ugly hackish way that could be improved significantly with a bit of assistance from rtld). This would be ideal anyway and also most likely avoid the cause for going back. Just keep both versions in the system and let the system decide which one to use. Erich ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 2 Jun 2012, at 12:01, Erich wrote: I would even accept to get the 'release' ports tree without security fixes just to have a system which is up and running fast after I tried an upgrade like what is happening at the moment with PNG dependent ports. You have this already. Just install the ports tree snapshot from the release... David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, On 02 June 2012 PM 12:04:26 David Chisnall wrote: On 2 Jun 2012, at 12:01, Erich wrote: I would even accept to get the 'release' ports tree without security fixes just to have a system which is up and running fast after I tried an upgrade like what is happening at the moment with PNG dependent ports. You have this already. Just install the ports tree snapshot from the release... I know. I just what I would like to get is a direct method also people who are just basic users can use it without many problems. Erich ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 02.06.12 12:42, Erich Dollansky wrote: On 02 June 2012 AM 9:14:28 Chris Rees wrote: On Jun 2, 2012 4:04 AM, Erich Dollanskyer...@alogreentechnologies.com wrote: But I have to mention one disadvantage. The ports are in no way linked to the releases. This leads to situations in which a small change in a basic library will result in a complete update of the installed ports. I expressed this already many time here. It would be of advantage if the ports tree would also have tags like the base system itself. Unfortunately this is a massive amount of extra work - we only just keep up with updates as it is. I do not think so. At least not for the first step as I see it. Just make snapshots of the ports tree when the release comes out. These snapshots are with the releases anyway. What I did was very simple. I got the ports tree that comes with the release and installed the system back to the release status. Ok, it was some work for me - maybe not for others - to find this tree. A simple link could help here. I do not know if this is just an opinion which is too optimistic. But this functionality is already here. As I mentioned earlier, FreeBSD is not an end-user product, but rather a software platform and a kit that you can use to assemble pretty much what you can imagine. Here is one example, how to handle the 'port problem'. The example is with BSDRP: http://bsdrp.net/ This is an nanoBSD based system, that you can build yourself. For example, the 31 May 2012 svn code sets this environment variable PORTS_DATE=date=2012.05.31.00.00.00 to pull the ports tree with that particular date (when it was tested to build sucessfuly) It then proceeds to download it's own copy of /usr/src and /usr/ports and uses these to build the complete installation. More or less, controlled environment. The /usr/src of -stable/-current and /usr/ports are in fact moving target. If you are uncomfortable with that, just sync to some date and you will have that date's snapshot and therefore known state. Most people who are bitten by the 'sudden change in ports' are just ignoring this option. You don't have to use the (arguable old) 'release' ports tree. Ports get fixed/adapted for the new version usually months after release. Daniel ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 2 Jun 2012, at 12:19, Erich wrote: Hi, On 02 June 2012 PM 12:04:26 David Chisnall wrote: On 2 Jun 2012, at 12:01, Erich wrote: I would even accept to get the 'release' ports tree without security fixes just to have a system which is up and running fast after I tried an upgrade like what is happening at the moment with PNG dependent ports. You have this already. Just install the ports tree snapshot from the release... I know. I just what I would like to get is a direct method also people who are just basic users can use it without many problems. Run sysinstall, point it at the release CD / DVD, say 'install ports tree'... Encouraging basic users to run insecure versions of applications, however, is something that I would strongly object to. David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, On 02 June 2012 PM 12:50:16 David Chisnall wrote: On 2 Jun 2012, at 12:19, Erich wrote: Hi, On 02 June 2012 PM 12:04:26 David Chisnall wrote: On 2 Jun 2012, at 12:01, Erich wrote: I would even accept to get the 'release' ports tree without security fixes just to have a system which is up and running fast after I tried an upgrade like what is happening at the moment with PNG dependent ports. You have this already. Just install the ports tree snapshot from the release... I know. I just what I would like to get is a direct method also people who are just basic users can use it without many problems. Run sysinstall, point it at the release CD / DVD, say 'install ports tree'... how old will the last tree then be? All I want to suggest that this can be downloaded directly via the Internet. Encouraging basic users to run insecure versions of applications, however, is something that I would strongly object to. What will a new user do when faced with this situation? Just go back to what ever system was installed before and keep the fingers off FreeBSD as it seemed too difficult to find a solution for a small problem. It is like selling sharp knifes. There will be always the risk that people will get killed by the knife. But there are still sharp knifes available in shops. Erich ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, On 02 June 2012 PM 2:53:48 Daniel Kalchev wrote: You don't have to use the (arguable old) 'release' ports tree. Ports get fixed/adapted for the new version usually months after release. I think we are talking here about two totally different problems. Your hint with sysinstall would do the same when the CD is available. Very, very simple and only for things went wrong. You are thinking of a much more complex solution. I know that the ports tree is a moving target. But it stops moving during the release period. This could be used to give a fall back solution. Or do I see this really too simple? Erich ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 02.06.12 15:32, Erich wrote: I know that the ports tree is a moving target. But it stops moving during the release period. This could be used to give a fall back solution. Or do I see this really too simple? The ports tree is a moving target during release periods still, although there are efforts to make movements smaller. This is why, after a release it suddenly moves more :) Daniel ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 2 June 2012 10:42, Erich Dollansky er...@alogreentechnologies.com wrote: Hi, On 02 June 2012 AM 9:14:28 Chris Rees wrote: On Jun 2, 2012 4:04 AM, Erich Dollansky er...@alogreentechnologies.com wrote: But I have to mention one disadvantage. The ports are in no way linked to the releases. This leads to situations in which a small change in a basic library will result in a complete update of the installed ports. I expressed this already many time here. It would be of advantage if the ports tree would also have tags like the base system itself. Unfortunately this is a massive amount of extra work - we only just keep up with updates as it is. I do not think so. At least not for the first step as I see it. Just make snapshots of the ports tree when the release comes out. These snapshots are with the releases anyway. What I did was very simple. I got the ports tree that comes with the release and installed the system back to the release status. Ok, it was some work for me - maybe not for others - to find this tree. A simple link could help here. I do not know if this is just an opinion which is too optimistic. What I know is that all the security fixes which appeared since the release are not in there. If I have the choice between three days or more of compiling and known security holes, I will take the security holes, make the client happy and upgrade after the work for the client is finished. I would not expect that FreeBSD will provide more than this. Then you already have all you need-- RELEASEs use packages compiled at time of release if you use pkg_add -r, and the ports tree is tagged at release if you wish to get a 'snapshot'. Note that you will not get any official support if you choose to use a tagged tree :) Chris ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, On 02 June 2012 PM 3:47:27 Daniel Kalchev wrote: On 02.06.12 15:32, Erich wrote: I know that the ports tree is a moving target. But it stops moving during the release period. This could be used to give a fall back solution. Or do I see this really too simple? The ports tree is a moving target during release periods still, although there are efforts to make movements smaller. This is why, after a release it suddenly moves more :) I know. I save me as many versions as possible during a release just as a fall back. I did not do this before and got hit several times when I believed that all I need is the installation of a small program. Anyway, the team knows the version of the tree used for the release they are working on. Making this ports tree easily available could help to overcome some problems. Erich ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, On 02 June 2012 PM 10:52:48 Chris Rees wrote: On 2 June 2012 10:42, Erich Dollansky er...@alogreentechnologies.com wrote: On 02 June 2012 AM 9:14:28 Chris Rees wrote: On Jun 2, 2012 4:04 AM, Erich Dollansky er...@alogreentechnologies.com wrote: But I have to mention one disadvantage. The ports are in no way linked to the releases. This leads to situations in which a small change in a basic library will result in a complete update of the installed ports. I expressed this already many time here. It would be of advantage if the ports tree would also have tags like the base system itself. Unfortunately this is a massive amount of extra work - we only just keep up with updates as it is. I do not think so. At least not for the first step as I see it. Just make snapshots of the ports tree when the release comes out. These snapshots are with the releases anyway. What I did was very simple. I got the ports tree that comes with the release and installed the system back to the release status. Ok, it was some work for me - maybe not for others - to find this tree. A simple link could help here. I do not know if this is just an opinion which is too optimistic. What I know is that all the security fixes which appeared since the release are not in there. If I have the choice between three days or more of compiling and known security holes, I will take the security holes, make the client happy and upgrade after the work for the client is finished. I would not expect that FreeBSD will provide more than this. Then you already have all you need-- RELEASEs use packages compiled at time of release if you use pkg_add -r, and the ports tree is tagged at release if you wish to get a 'snapshot'. I have it. Yes, but how difficult is this to get for others? Note that you will not get any official support if you choose to use a tagged tree :) When you can chose between a running system and a supported system which does not work, which would you take? Erich ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 31.05.12 18:41, Damien Fleuriot wrote: You missed the bit about 3 reboots, while these don't take 15 mins each, they're still time consuming and disruptive. 1/ reboot after installing new kernel 2/ reboot after installing new world 3/ reboot after rebuilding ports About the only time I ever do that is when moving from very distant versions, like from 6.4 to 9.0... Upgrading from say, 8-stable from year ago, to today's 8-stable usually requires just one reboot: rebuild world, kernel, reinstall kernel, world, update configuration files, rebuild ports, reboot. There are many cases where I do rebuild/reinstall kernel and world but do not reboot for one reason or other. Cases, where the kernel is incompatible with userspace are extremely rare and typically documented. So yes, for example during port rebuild there might be glitches with services. You are better to shut down these services that will be affected, like web server. (Although usually say, apache would load all modules at startup time and replacing them under its feet will only be noticed after it is restarted). Most of the time however is spent just compiling... and unless your server is really underpowered or overloaded it does not impact anything. This again, is especially true for the OS. I wish ports could be rebuilt and reinstalled on a single step like FreeBSD. In any case, if you have 'server farms', or like you said firewalls with CARP etc, you can usually shut down any of the members for as long as necessary and not impact any services. If you rebuild things on 'central' server, the downtime will be indeed minimal. Daniel ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
PFsync firewall states updates (was: Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?)
On 5/31/12 9:51 PM, Nick Gustas wrote: On 5/31/2012 12:52 PM, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/31/12 6:37 PM, Nikos Vassiliadis wrote: On 5/31/2012 5:41 PM, Damien Fleuriot wrote: Furthermore, when upgrading the CARP Master firewall, we need to plan with the Project Manager a failover to the CARP Backup firewall. Yes, I know about pfsync, yes, we use it, no, it doesn't *instantly* sync sessions for PF. A bit offtopic on this thread, but isn't pfsync designed to do just that? instantly? With instantly I really mean: Communicate every change to the stable table to the other firewall in order to let the stateful connections survive a firewall failover. Obviously, some packets will be lost, but TCP connections should survive, right? I am not arguing, I ask. Nikos Updates aren't instantaneous, they're sent in bundles. This means that when you failover, you lose the connections that have completed a SYN/SYNACK/ACK sequence on your main firewall but which aren't synched on your backup. These connections will continue with the peer sending regular non-syn packets, which your backup-now-master PF will drop. On topic, if anyone has an awesome idea around this, I'm all ears, this exact topic is causing us some level of discomfort at work, when we need to swap firewalls for updates. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org I don't see this option on FreeBSD 9, but on OpenBSD pfsync has a defer flag that would appear to address your issue. The options are as follows: defer Defer transmission of the first packet in a state until a peer has acknowledged that the associated state has been inserted. See pfsync(4) for more information. -defer Do not defer the first packet in a state. This is the default. From pfsync(4) The pfsync interface will attempt to collapse multiple state updates into a single packet where possible. The maximum number of times a single state can be updated before a pfsync packet will be sent out is con- trolled by the maxupd parameter to ifconfig (see ifconfig(8) and the ex- ample below for more details). The sending out of a pfsync packet will be delayed by a maximum of one second. Where more than one firewall might actively handle packets, e.g. with certain ospfd(8), bgpd(8) or carp(4) configurations, it is beneficial to defer transmission of the initial packet of a connection. The pfsync state insert message is sent immediately; the packet is queued until ei- ther this message is acknowledged by another system, or a timeout has ex- pired. This behaviour is enabled with the defer parameter to ifconfig(8). I'm sure this could be ported over. -Nick This mimics the behavior of some manufacturers like Juniper and is *definitely* the kind of option we're looking for. While I lack the skills to port this, I'm definitely available for testing. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/12 8:13 PM, Matthew Seaman wrote: On 31/05/2012 16:41, Damien Fleuriot wrote: You missed the bit about 3 reboots, while these don't take 15 mins each, they're still time consuming and disruptive. 1/ reboot after installing new kernel 2/ reboot after installing new world 3/ reboot after rebuilding ports If you rebuilt the ports first, then you'ld only have two reboots. Also, while the cautious approach detailed in /usr/src/UPDATING is never wrong, much of the time you can do the upgrade perfectly well by installing world+kernel together and just rebooting once. Obviously this is not a good idea if your machines are in a datacenter many miles away and you don't have console-equivalent access or if you're upgrading over a large delta in versions, or you're making major changes to the kernel config. This sort of operation is something that ZFS boot environment support (recently committed to HEAD, due for MFC within the month) makes much, much safer and easier to deal with. You don't need to do a separate reboot to test the kernel as you've still got an entire kernel+world in the previous BE to fall back on. Cheers, Matthew The reason I rebuild the ports last is because, unless I'm wrong, any port that's statically linked to a system library would be linked to the old library from the old world. We've got very high HA constraints on these machines and I really prefer doing this the cautious way. Hell, on the first reboot I actually test the new kernel with nextboot -k , even when doing 8.2-RELEASE - 8-STABLE upgrades... Regarding the ZFS boot thingy, I'm not comfortable enough with it to push it in production, so we're still using UFS here. Sure looks interesting though. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 6/1/12 8:54 AM, Daniel Kalchev wrote: On 31.05.12 18:41, Damien Fleuriot wrote: You missed the bit about 3 reboots, while these don't take 15 mins each, they're still time consuming and disruptive. 1/ reboot after installing new kernel 2/ reboot after installing new world 3/ reboot after rebuilding ports About the only time I ever do that is when moving from very distant versions, like from 6.4 to 9.0... Upgrading from say, 8-stable from year ago, to today's 8-stable usually requires just one reboot: rebuild world, kernel, reinstall kernel, world, update configuration files, rebuild ports, reboot. There are many cases where I do rebuild/reinstall kernel and world but do not reboot for one reason or other. Cases, where the kernel is incompatible with userspace are extremely rare and typically documented. So yes, for example during port rebuild there might be glitches with services. You are better to shut down these services that will be affected, like web server. (Although usually say, apache would load all modules at startup time and replacing them under its feet will only be noticed after it is restarted). Most of the time however is spent just compiling... and unless your server is really underpowered or overloaded it does not impact anything. This again, is especially true for the OS. I wish ports could be rebuilt and reinstalled on a single step like FreeBSD. In any case, if you have 'server farms', or like you said firewalls with CARP etc, you can usually shut down any of the members for as long as necessary and not impact any services. If you rebuild things on 'central' server, the downtime will be indeed minimal. Daniel Yup I've been considering using a central server to hold /usr/src and /usr/obj for some time, would save me quite some time... I'll try to put something of the sort in place sometime this summer, the less painful the updates, the more likely we are to actually publish them. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 01/06/2012 09:16, Damien Fleuriot wrote: The reason I rebuild the ports last is because, unless I'm wrong, any port that's statically linked to a system library would be linked to the old library from the old world. Uh -- if it's statically linked, then the object code is copied from the library into the executable image. There's no dependency between the static library and the executable once the executable has been produced. However, ports very rarely use static linkage, and even more rarely use static linkage against system libraries. Even if the system library did change, that wouldn't trigger a rebuild of the port, as there's no version number to trigger it. You could, I suppose, rebuild every port for every system update, but this would be a huge waste of time and CPU power. There have been occasions where eg. there has been a security update to one of the OpenSSL libraries in base, and the security advisory has recommended rebuilding statically linked binaries, but that only happened once in about 10 years. Cheers, Matthew -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
There's a nice discussion going on, over at Phoronix. http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?71263 For some reason, they don't seem to like us very much. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 6/1/2012 17:19, Katinka wrote: There's a nice discussion going on, over at Phoronix. http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?71263 For some reason, they don't seem to like us very much. Lots of the comments remind me about Linux vs. Windows in the late 90s, and taken with a grain of salt are fairly amusing because of how ignorant a lot of them are. I found this particularly fitting comment at the very end: If you'd ask me for the biggest difference between Linux and BSD users: We know all about Linux - They know nothing about BSD. Which is sad really, their lives could be so much easier if only they knew how much better it could be ;D (My opinion of course, I'm sure lots of people think Windows Server administration is easier than any UNIX -- just not on this list). To each their own, and arguing about it is counter-productive. I do think that forum post underscores the need for advocacy though -- we need to get the message out as to why FreeBSD is better than any OS in a lot of applications (which is different than arguing it out on Linux forums). We need them to try it out and expose them to the things that make it great so they see it first hand. Because it is clear most of these posters are very ignorant about FreeBSD -- that's really our collective fault. Trolls and fanbois aside there is probably a huge number of Linux admins out there who just use it because that is what they use .. in the same way that Windows admins in the 90s hadn't really heard of Linux and feared it because they didn't understand it. My 2 cents + attempt at keeping this thread constructive I think I'm going to go sign up for the FreeBSD-advocacy list now ... ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
I think this iterates my point on the Forums.. To gain critical mass FreeBSD needs to start showing some benchmarks and numbers to back up the advocacy claims. I think this will also give the dev team technical direction to get back into grind of tweaking for performance and not just features. I may be totally incorrect with my above ideas, but it's what i would like to see from FreeBSD *again*... This is the reason in the first place most people used FreeBSD, stability/scalability/performance are the hallmarks of FreeBSD. If we have these hard hitting numbers released frequently it gives the dev team a good indication of how changes reflect on performance. I would be willing to help with benchmarking. Thanks. On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Katinka kati...@lavabit.com wrote: There's a nice discussion going on, over at Phoronix. http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?71263 For some reason, they don't seem to like us very much. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- Regards, Jason Leschnik. [m] 0432 35 4224 [w@] jason dot leschnik at ansto dot gov dot au [U@] jml...@uow.edu.au ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 6/1/2012 18:03, Jason Leschnik wrote: I may be totally incorrect with my above ideas, but it's what i would like to see from FreeBSD *again*... This is the reason in the first place most people used FreeBSD, stability/scalability/performance are the hallmarks of FreeBSD. If we have these hard hitting numbers released frequently it gives the dev team a good indication of how changes reflect on performance. This is a good point and the kind of stuff that would make a, for example, great Slashdot post once finished. Of course there would be arguments but I think it would be good exposure. It certainly would be nice to have a place to point to these things vs. just saying its more better and stabler, too. And if its not at least its acknowledged so it can be fixed. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 01.06.12 13:19, Katinka wrote: There's a nice discussion going on, over at Phoronix. http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?71263 For some reason, they don't seem to like us very much. Do we really care? The number of really bright people, or even people who are able to reasonably comprehend and understand things is very, very small and more or less constant over the years. The rest will always be more and there is really no point to convince them opf anything. Evangelizing those ignorant people to FreeBSD is just creating new (FreeBSD) religion, which is not what the bright minds are concerned. Attract the masses and you will definitely lose the leaders. Instead, lead by example. Showcase. Demonstrate how superior FreeBSD is because the people who keep it going are not interested to be the Jack of All Trades (and master of none). Showcase implementations that are hard to do with any other OS. Don't even complete on benchmarks. This is one thing I learned years ago working closely with Cisco: your competitor could always outspec you or win the benchmark, with system specifically designed for the task. Or tuned to the task. Just like with Linux. This is not to say we should ignore opportunities to improve FreeBSD. Just don't slip for the popularity vote and stay within the framework and principles (even when you are seemingly outpaced) that made FreeBSD so successful. Albert Einstein once said: Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. Daniel PS: This became longer than originally envisioned. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 01-06-2012 13:39, Daniel Kalchev wrote: Instead, lead by example. Showcase. Demonstrate how superior FreeBSD is because the people who keep it going are not interested to be the Jack of All Trades (and master of none). Showcase implementations that are hard to do with any other OS. This. When we (the Danish BSD usergroup BSD-DK) go to opensource conferences we always have running FreeBSD systems in our booth doing live demos of what FreeBSD can do. This is fun for us and very popular with visitors. - 2010 was pf-pfsync-carp failover firewalls. People get impressed when you pull the plug on one node and stuff keeps running. - 2011 was a HAST/ZFS failover system with a virtualbox VM running on the shared storage. Again, pulling the plug on one node and showing that the VM keeps running has a big 'wow-factor'. - 2012 was the 'year of the jail' for us. We demonstrated jail management with ezjail, recursive jails, ressource control with rctl and lots more. All these have been major successes in the sense that people are impressed, grab a cd and go home to try it out. We often hear that people didn't know that FreeBSD was capable of this and that. I firmly believe that live demonstrations of unique features is the best way to get more (of the right kind of) people to run FreeBSD. Best regards, Thomas Steen Rasmussen Chairman, BSD-DK ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
There's a nice discussion going on, over at Phoronix. http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?71263 For some reason, they don't seem to like us very much. ALL of the PC performance weenies run Windows. They're totally stupid when it comes to software and all they care about is the Windows benchmarking apps and how many FPS they can get out of their new whizbang graphics card. And they're just as zealous about Windows as Linux lemmings are about Linux or GPL fanbois are about Stallman and the FSF. Really, they're overglorified game appliance users. Is it any wonder they bash every OS that doesn't let them play video games? You can't discuss software or the OS rationally with 99.9% of overclockers. Once you realize how much they know about software is inversely proportional to how much they (think) they know about hardware, all these articles and discussions cease to become relevant. PLONK!!! ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, On 30 May 2012 PM 7:20:31 David Chisnall wrote: This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? I must say that it is a long time ago when I sat at the first BSD machine. The most important feature is the configuration and the update procedure. Things rarely change in a way that users have to relearn. It is also important that it is possible to use a machine and upgrade it only every six or twelve months without facing fundamental problems. What helps there that the user can define a branch (8.x or 9.x) and stick with it as long it is supported. The users are not forced to move to the next version which might introduces some changes the user is not used to it. This allows users to skip one main branch. While it is possible to stick with 8 until 10 is released, it is also possible to move to 9 or even 10. Sticking with 8 reduces the risk to get caught with some problems during the upgrade by some 50% But I have to mention one disadvantage. The ports are in no way linked to the releases. This leads to situations in which a small change in a basic library will result in a complete update of the installed ports. I expressed this already many time here. It would be of advantage if the ports tree would also have tags like the base system itself. I use a simple trick. I update the ports tree mainly when it is frozen due to a new FreeBSD release. I believe that it is hard to express the other reasons for using FreeBSD in a world in which users take is as god given that an operating system fails or forces them to reinstall over and over again. Erich ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Thanks to all who replied, both on and off list. I've attempted to distill the replies that I got into a coherent summary. I've put the draft on the wiki here: http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhyUseFreeBSD Feedback welcome! David On 30 May 2012, at 19:20, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/30/12 6:52 PM, Pierre-Luc Drouin wrote: On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:20 PM, David Chisnallthera...@freebsd.orgwrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? Hi, i would not say very much different than the guys have said. FreeBSD system is know as heavy duty system and chooice of admins where solid rock performace is required, such as telecom industries, extremly large environment, any individual can also use FreeBSD for same purpose. There are many meaningfull reason those can prove FreeBSD is best system. 1.) I use FreeBSD because it is extremely robust System. 2.) Stability / Reliability / it's ability 3.) FreeBSD known for its ability to handle heavy network traffic with high performance and rock solid reliability 4.) Resource management is very good for FreeBSD, such as Memory, processor use. (I maintain 218 Linux / Unix Server) therefor i know of. 5.) FreeBSD is the system of choice for high performance network applications. 6.) pf is better than iptables. 7.) many many more Thanks / Nath NK ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
1) Been with BSD/OS since it's inception. Great OS and good example to follow. But BSD/OS was eventually killed and FreeBSD sort of inherited it's legacy. Both follow the simplicity and good architecture models, with FreeBSD improving on modularity. 2) The BSD license. Contrary to popular belief, it has brought a lot of high quality development to FreeBSD. 3) Universal toolkit. It scales easily from the thinnest embedded system, to various desktops to huge servers -- all with the same familiar tools and environment. Sure, for consumption there are easier systems, such as PC-BSD (FreeBSD again), Ubuntu and, of course OS X. But there is no better platform, or kit to build whatever you need around. Daniel ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Wed, 30 May 2012 19:20:31 +0100, David Chisnall thera...@freebsd.org wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org There are lots of reasons but in my mind the top three are : 1 - It works 2 - It works everytime 3 - It works everytime the way I expected it to work. I would like to be able to say this about any other OS, the closest I ever got to this level of reliability and reproductibility in behaviour was with VAX-VMS. -- Jérôme Herman Directeur Technique 06 14 37 76 28 ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/30/12 8:20 PM, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David We're using FreeBSD here only for firewall boxes. Reasons for using FBSD for firewalls: - CARP - relayd - PF - pfsync Reasons I can't get management to use FBSD for regular servers (web, haproxy, db...): - hard to use - update process is hard, time-consuming and annoying (as opposed to debian's for example) A regular debian update is 5 minutes + reboot A regular FBSD update is about 1.5 hour + 3 reboots (after installkernel, installworld, rebuild of ports) ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:06:55PM +0200, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/30/12 8:20 PM, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David We're using FreeBSD here only for firewall boxes. Reasons for using FBSD for firewalls: - CARP - relayd - PF - pfsync Reasons I can't get management to use FBSD for regular servers (web, haproxy, db...): - hard to use - update process is hard, time-consuming and annoying (as opposed to debian's for example) A regular debian update is 5 minutes + reboot A regular FBSD update is about 1.5 hour + 3 reboots (after installkernel, installworld, rebuild of ports) But how often do you need to update? pgp9FpZeRYyLy.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
-Original Message- From: Daniel Kalchev Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2012 1:01 PM 2) The BSD license. Contrary to popular belief, it has brought a lot of high quality development to FreeBSD. The salient point is that BSD license (and alike licenses)seem to bring in more talented people than GPL. Postgres vs. MySQL, BSD's vs. Loonix, Postfix, Apache etc... It's funny that talented people are pleased to see their code freely distributed, where mediocritys try their best to put it under viral licensing. -Reko ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi, Am 31.05.2012 um 12:24 schrieb Lars Engels lars.eng...@0x20.net: On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:06:55PM +0200, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/30/12 8:20 PM, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David We're using FreeBSD here only for firewall boxes. Reasons for using FBSD for firewalls: - CARP - relayd - PF - pfsync Reasons I can't get management to use FBSD for regular servers (web, haproxy, db...): - hard to use - update process is hard, time-consuming and annoying (as opposed to debian's for example) A regular debian update is 5 minutes + reboot A regular FBSD update is about 1.5 hour + 3 reboots (after installkernel, installworld, rebuild of ports) But how often do you need to update? That reminds me - there is still a 2.2.8 system up and running that needs to be replaced ;-) For a server farm, one can use a central server who provides all packages that need to be upgraded, so it is usually only one system that needs a longer time. All others just mount the directories and install/upgrade using compiled world and /usr/ports/packages/All :-) Nice and easy. Best regards, Holger -- Holger Kipp Diplom-Mathematiker Senior Consultant Tel. : +49 30 436 58 114 Fax. : +49 30 436 58 214 Mobil: +49 178 36 58 114 Email: holger.k...@alogis.com alogis AG Alt-Moabit 90b D-10559 Berlin web : http://www.alogis.com -- alogis AG Sitz/Registergericht: Berlin/AG Charlottenburg, HRB 71484 Vorstand: Arne Friedrichs, Joern Samuelson Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Reinhard Mielke ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
In no specific order, for me they are: - Rock solid stability, not only in base-system but also in ports. - The completeness of the ports system and helpfulness of the maintainers. - ZFS Frank On 5/31/2012 12:32 PM, Holger Kipp wrote: Hi, Am 31.05.2012 um 12:24 schrieb Lars Engelslars.eng...@0x20.net: On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:06:55PM +0200, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/30/12 8:20 PM, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David We're using FreeBSD here only for firewall boxes. Reasons for using FBSD for firewalls: - CARP - relayd - PF - pfsync Reasons I can't get management to use FBSD for regular servers (web, haproxy, db...): - hard to use - update process is hard, time-consuming and annoying (as opposed to debian's for example) A regular debian update is 5 minutes + reboot A regular FBSD update is about 1.5 hour + 3 reboots (after installkernel, installworld, rebuild of ports) But how often do you need to update? That reminds me - there is still a 2.2.8 system up and running that needs to be replaced ;-) For a server farm, one can use a central server who provides all packages that need to be upgraded, so it is usually only one system that needs a longer time. All others just mount the directories and install/upgrade using compiled world and /usr/ports/packages/All :-) Nice and easy. Best regards, Holger -- Holger Kipp Diplom-Mathematiker Senior Consultant Tel. : +49 30 436 58 114 Fax. : +49 30 436 58 214 Mobil: +49 178 36 58 114 Email: holger.k...@alogis.com alogis AG Alt-Moabit 90b D-10559 Berlin web : http://www.alogis.com -- alogis AG Sitz/Registergericht: Berlin/AG Charlottenburg, HRB 71484 Vorstand: Arne Friedrichs, Joern Samuelson Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Reinhard Mielke ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
I've only been using FreeBSD for about ~2 years, the thing i really like about FreeBSD is the stability of the configuration system. Placement of configuration files and startup scripts make life easier in daily administration. The things i'm using FreeBSD for? # Gateway Router # Squid Proxy cache # Web Server (Apache 2.2) # Wordpress Blog # Primary/Secondary DNS (Bind) # DHCP # PXE Boot machine # Syslog Server # Firewall (very much in love with PF) I'm not really confident with updates yet, still learning so yet to push a FreeBSD machine into production. Thanks. On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 4:52 AM, Pierre-Luc Drouin pldro...@pldrouin.net wrote: On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:20 PM, David Chisnall thera...@freebsd.orgwrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org For me it is: -Stability -Well-structured OS (i.e. filesystem, kernel and its config, etc) -The ports system These are also the elements that made me start using FreeBSD about a decade ago. So these are mainly consequences of the development strategy of FreeBSD, as opposed to the free for all approach of Linux. Personally, what makes me choose Linux over FreeBSD for laptop usage is the very limited acpi support of FreeBSD (suspend and resume) compared to Linux. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- Regards, Jason Leschnik. [m] 0432 35 4224 [w@] jason dot leschnik at ansto dot gov dot au [U@] jml...@uow.edu.au ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 31 May 2012, at 12:21, Lars Engels lars.eng...@0x20.net wrote: On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:06:55PM +0200, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/30/12 8:20 PM, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David We're using FreeBSD here only for firewall boxes. Reasons for using FBSD for firewalls: - CARP - relayd - PF - pfsync Reasons I can't get management to use FBSD for regular servers (web, haproxy, db...): - hard to use - update process is hard, time-consuming and annoying (as opposed to debian's for example) A regular debian update is 5 minutes + reboot A regular FBSD update is about 1.5 hour + 3 reboots (after installkernel, installworld, rebuild of ports) But how often do you need to As a matter of fact, too often, that's te problem. We have 800 servers and I can't argue that debian's update process is much simpler and faster. There is also the performance aspect. We get better performance on Haproxy and PGsql on Debian than on bsd.___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
A regular debian update is 5 minutes + reboot A regular FBSD update is about 1.5 hour + 3 reboots (after installkernel, installworld, rebuild of ports) But how often do you need to As a matter of fact, too often, that's te problem. We have 800 servers and I can't argue that debian's update process is much simpler and faster. Take a look at freebsd-update: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/updating-upgrading-freebsdupdate.html. This tracks release. -- regards Claus When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner. Shakespeare twitter.com/kometen ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
A freebsd-update + portsnap + portupgrade is really quick... I even wrote this little script to check for pkg_updating info: http://leschnik.me/blog/?p=79 Thanks. On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 9:14 PM, Damien Fleuriot m...@my.gd wrote: On 31 May 2012, at 12:21, Lars Engels lars.eng...@0x20.net wrote: On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:06:55PM +0200, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/30/12 8:20 PM, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David We're using FreeBSD here only for firewall boxes. Reasons for using FBSD for firewalls: - CARP - relayd - PF - pfsync Reasons I can't get management to use FBSD for regular servers (web, haproxy, db...): - hard to use - update process is hard, time-consuming and annoying (as opposed to debian's for example) A regular debian update is 5 minutes + reboot A regular FBSD update is about 1.5 hour + 3 reboots (after installkernel, installworld, rebuild of ports) But how often do you need to As a matter of fact, too often, that's te problem. We have 800 servers and I can't argue that debian's update process is much simpler and faster. There is also the performance aspect. We get better performance on Haproxy and PGsql on Debian than on bsd.___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- Regards, Jason Leschnik. [m] 0432 35 4224 [w@] jason dot leschnik at ansto dot gov dot au [U@] jml...@uow.edu.au ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/2012 2:09 PM, Jason Leschnik wrote: A freebsd-update + portsnap + portupgrade is really quick... ah, ok! I even wrote this little script to check for pkg_updating info: http://leschnik.me/blog/?p=79 Note that if you have many out of date ports this script can take a while to finish it’s run… Please be patient!!! Huh?? These comments are a bit contradictory, don't you think? Couldn't resist, sorry:p Nikos ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
a while isn't an S.I. unit, so it actually might be pretty quick :P On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 11:02 PM, Nikos Vassiliadis nv...@gmx.com wrote: On 5/31/2012 2:09 PM, Jason Leschnik wrote: A freebsd-update + portsnap + portupgrade is really quick... ah, ok! I even wrote this little script to check for pkg_updating info: http://leschnik.me/blog/?p=79 Note that if you have many out of date ports this script can take a while to finish it’s run… Please be patient!!! Huh?? These comments are a bit contradictory, don't you think? Couldn't resist, sorry:p Nikos -- Regards, Jason Leschnik. [m] 0432 35 4224 [w@] jason dot leschnik at ansto dot gov dot au [U@] jml...@uow.edu.au ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/12 12:32 PM, Holger Kipp wrote: Hi, Am 31.05.2012 um 12:24 schrieb Lars Engels lars.eng...@0x20.net: On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:06:55PM +0200, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/30/12 8:20 PM, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David We're using FreeBSD here only for firewall boxes. Reasons for using FBSD for firewalls: - CARP - relayd - PF - pfsync Reasons I can't get management to use FBSD for regular servers (web, haproxy, db...): - hard to use - update process is hard, time-consuming and annoying (as opposed to debian's for example) A regular debian update is 5 minutes + reboot A regular FBSD update is about 1.5 hour + 3 reboots (after installkernel, installworld, rebuild of ports) But how often do you need to update? That reminds me - there is still a 2.2.8 system up and running that needs to be replaced ;-) For a server farm, one can use a central server who provides all packages that need to be upgraded, so it is usually only one system that needs a longer time. All others just mount the directories and install/upgrade using compiled world and /usr/ports/packages/All :-) Nice and easy. Best regards, Holger Your idea has merit and we've already considered it. However, these boxes are on different VLANs for security and confinement reasons and I loathe putting them on a shared VLAN just for this purpose. Besides, if the main server were to crash, we'd run into problems. We don't wish to introduce a SPOF. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
David Chisnall wrote: http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhyUseFreeBSD Feedback welcome! Quote: The RCng system that reads this file [rc.conf] understands dependencies between services and so can automatically launch them in parallel [...] Can it? There have been patches in the lists, was one of them committed? ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/12 1:20 PM, Claus Guttesen wrote: A regular debian update is 5 minutes + reboot A regular FBSD update is about 1.5 hour + 3 reboots (after installkernel, installworld, rebuild of ports) But how often do you need to As a matter of fact, too often, that's te problem. We have 800 servers and I can't argue that debian's update process is much simpler and faster. Take a look at freebsd-update: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/updating-upgrading-freebsdupdate.html. This tracks release. As I just replied to an off-list mail, we can't use binary upgrades because: 1/ we use custom kernels with a lot of the stuff stripped 2/ we pass custom options to ports, which excludes pre-compiled packages 3/ we don't track release, I'm trying to move our boxes away from it so we can get faster patches, we track 8-STABLE on most boxes ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/30/12 2:20 PM, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? These have been said before but I'll reiterate. 1. Stability. It's a well thought out, designed from the ground up, operating system. It is not a collection of chosen for you packages attached to a kernel. 2. Ease of configuration 3. Ports Having used various Linux distos for quite awhile, the above are all so much of an improvement, and are still why I use FreeBSD. To add others, in no particular order: Ease of upgrade. While some have noted that binary upgrades are easier on Debian, it's far and away superior, IMMHO, to have a locally compiled system. Many Linux distros have no upgrade path short of a wipe and re-install. Community support by dedicated professionals. BSD License vs GPL. I agree with the sentiment about small minds and viral licensing. I use FreeBSD for webserver (nginx), database (MySQL), mail (exim and dovecot), nameserver (BIND), firewall, and more. As a small time, part time sysadmin I couldn't imagine going back to any other OS. I don't make my living from server management, rather my servers support my interests and small business (if anyone has ever seen the Staples commercial in the US with Bob, the sole proprietor and employee who wears all of the hats including tech support, that's me). -- Jim Ohlstein ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/12 4:01 PM, Jim Ohlstein wrote: To add others, in no particular order: Ease of upgrade. While some have noted that binary upgrades are easier on Debian, it's far and away superior, IMMHO, to have a locally compiled system. Many Linux distros have no upgrade path short of a wipe and re-install. Far superior, check, FAR MORE TIME CONSUMING, check as well ! Also, I don't get your linux distros have no upgrade path short of a full reinstall bit ? ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/2012 21:22, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/31/12 4:01 PM, Jim Ohlstein wrote: To add others, in no particular order: Ease of upgrade. While some have noted that binary upgrades are easier on Debian, it's far and away superior, IMMHO, to have a locally compiled system. Many Linux distros have no upgrade path short of a wipe and re-install. Far superior, check, FAR MORE TIME CONSUMING, check as well ! This brings up another point: Repair is always possible with FreeBSD. You can back out all packages or types of packages easily (and re-compile or reinstall them if needed). You can recompile/reinstall the OS if needed (somewhere else too and copy it over). Or just copy pieces from a live cd or restore tarball. And it's pretty straightforward to do even for a non-admin person. You can even restore over a live running system with tar, which I do occasionally when cloning machines or restoring them with dump/restore. Very slick. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/12 4:30 PM, Adam Strohl wrote: On 5/31/2012 21:22, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/31/12 4:01 PM, Jim Ohlstein wrote: To add others, in no particular order: Ease of upgrade. While some have noted that binary upgrades are easier on Debian, it's far and away superior, IMMHO, to have a locally compiled system. Many Linux distros have no upgrade path short of a wipe and re-install. Far superior, check, FAR MORE TIME CONSUMING, check as well ! This brings up another point: Repair is always possible with FreeBSD. You can back out all packages or types of packages easily (and re-compile or reinstall them if needed). You can recompile/reinstall the OS if needed (somewhere else too and copy it over). Or just copy pieces from a live cd or restore tarball. And it's pretty straightforward to do even for a non-admin person. You can even restore over a live running system with tar, which I do occasionally when cloning machines or restoring them with dump/restore. Very slick. Regarding recovering from blunders, and dump/restore for restoration or even cloning purposes, I also use them and I can advocate the efficiency and usefulness. Regarding packages, I've never really explored it, would you detail a bit ? ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 04:22:37PM +0200, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/31/12 4:01 PM, Jim Ohlstein wrote: To add others, in no particular order: Ease of upgrade. While some have noted that binary upgrades are easier on Debian, it's far and away superior, IMMHO, to have a locally compiled system. Many Linux distros have no upgrade path short of a wipe and re-install. Far superior, check, FAR MORE TIME CONSUMING, check as well ! Also, I don't get your linux distros have no upgrade path short of a full reinstall bit ? I don't know about many, but RHEL specifically states that upgrading from RHEL4.x to 5.x, or 5.x to 6.x, is not supported and that you should wipe and reinstall the system. Gary ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/2012 21:47, Damien Fleuriot wrote: Regarding packages, I've never really explored it, would you detail a bit ? Well, I really mean the resulting pkg info from a port. A good example is PHP, sometimes you have to say everyone out of the pool because of an upgrade: cd /var/db/pkg PKGS=`ls | egrep ^(php|pear|pecl)`; for PKG in $PKGS; do echo $PKG; pkg_delete $PKG; done; Running that a few times until it stops picking things up, then its a few commands to re-install PHP and its extensions (because of the extensions roll-up port). You can of course script it further, which is part of why I like FreeBSD so much. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/12 10:22 AM, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/31/12 4:01 PM, Jim Ohlstein wrote: To add others, in no particular order: Ease of upgrade. While some have noted that binary upgrades are easier on Debian, it's far and away superior, IMMHO, to have a locally compiled system. Many Linux distros have no upgrade path short of a wipe and re-install. Far superior, check, FAR MORE TIME CONSUMING, check as well ! No need to yell. Good things take time. That's life. The thing that takes the most time is building world. My boxes stay online during that time, and I am usually doing other things, so who cares if it takes an hour or so? I only take the system offline after I've installed the new kernel. I boot into single user mode, install world and reboot. Cleaning up configuration files takes a few minutes, then I'm good to go. While I do rebuild all ports, I have only had *one* occasion where a binary built on an older system croaked on a new kernel. I have about 500 ports installed so maybe that's not that many. I upgrade my systems once or twice a year. It's not really a lot of time for me. Linux distros all certainly require a reboot for a new kernel and some likely require editing of config files. So where is the far more time consuming? In the compiling? Sorry, but I'm not one to sit and watch the lines go by on the terminal. I have better things to do and I do them. If the compilation hits a snag I'd find out why, fix it, and run it again. Also, I don't get your linux distros have no upgrade path short of a full reinstall bit ? Here's one. From http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/MigrationGuide : The actions described in this article can damage existing filesystems and operating systems if not done carefully, or even if followed exactly. Please experiment first on a test box, and only proceed after creating current and tested backups if you value your data. Never blindly copy/paste commands, particularly as root, without a thorough understanding of their effects. An attempt to upgrade CentOS-5 to CentOS-6 with *upgradeany* resulted in a non-functional system. [snip] A fresh install is generally *strongly* preferred over an upgrade. [snip] Remember - A fresh install is generally *strongly* preferred over an upgrade. [yes, they said it twice] [snip] Upgrades from systems other than the latest CentOS (WhiteBox, RHEL, TaoLinux, ...) may be possible but will also require more work cleaning up afterwards. Consider migrating to the corresponding CentOS release before upgrading. Sounds like an onerous and potentially dangerous process, and not recommended. You can do it if you want. I wouldn't. That's what I mean. The recommended way to upgrade RHEL based systems is with a fresh install. Maybe no upgrade path should have been only a dangerous and not advised upgrade path. Does that make you feel better? I didn't research other distros, but I'd guess there are at least a few with similar advisories. I'm not going to argue this as it can become an almost religious matter for some and a lightning rod for trolls. I'll leave it at that. Peace... out. -- Jim Ohlstein ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Thu, 31 May 2012 09:30:31 -0500, Adam Strohl adams-free...@ateamsystems.com wrote: This brings up another point: Repair is always possible with FreeBSD. Quick tip for you guys -- create your own mtree file for /usr/local, /usr/home, and /var via cron nightly. With that data and the ones provided for the base system you can fix a machine that someone accidentally chown -R / within minutes. The fact that Linux has nothing equivalent is frightening. Mtree has saved me a lot of time when customers have broken their servers. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
David Chisnall wrote: I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? I agree with what many others already wrote: Ports, ZFS, stability, consistency, ... But there's one thing that hasn't been mentioned so far, I think: jails. The jails feature was the most important reason why one of our largest customers chose FreeBSD for its server farm instead of Linux. I also use this feature quite a lot on my own boxes to easily confine services and applications into sandboxes, without having to use a full- blown virtualization system with all of its disadvantages. I also like the fact that there's a manual page for pretty much *everything*. If you come across an unknown system binary, configuration file, library function, system call or whatever, typing man name is almost guaranteed to enlighten you. Another thing worth mentioning is the FreeBSD policy that any change should try hard not to violate POLA, i.e. the principle of least astonishment. This improves users experience a lot. And finally, I like the way FreeBSD enables you to perform source-level upgrades. The last time I used installation media (CD, DVD, USB stick, whatever) for FreeBSD was in the previous century. Are they the same as when you first started using it? That's a different story ... Basically, I started using FreeBSD because it was BSD. It was almost 20 years ago when I was using SunOS 4.x (BSD-based) at the university. Then those dumb bastards at Sun (sorry, that's what I was thinking at that time) decided to switch to a SysV-based system with SunOS 5.x. It was horrible. I wanted my BSD back. At that time I had a little Slackware Linux partition on my PC at home, but it was an ugly mixture of BSD and SysV stuff. Then a fellow student mentioned FreeBSD to me, so I gave it a try (I think it was 2.0.5). Within minutes I was sold. Long live BSD! Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd The whole world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. -- Horace Walpole ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/12 5:13 PM, Jim Ohlstein wrote: On 5/31/12 10:22 AM, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/31/12 4:01 PM, Jim Ohlstein wrote: To add others, in no particular order: Ease of upgrade. While some have noted that binary upgrades are easier on Debian, it's far and away superior, IMMHO, to have a locally compiled system. Many Linux distros have no upgrade path short of a wipe and re-install. Far superior, check, FAR MORE TIME CONSUMING, check as well ! No need to yell. Good things take time. That's life. The thing that takes the most time is building world. My boxes stay online during that time, and I am usually doing other things, so who cares if it takes an hour or so? I only take the system offline after I've installed the new kernel. I boot into single user mode, install world and reboot. Cleaning up configuration files takes a few minutes, then I'm good to go. While I do rebuild all ports, I have only had *one* occasion where a binary built on an older system croaked on a new kernel. I have about 500 ports installed so maybe that's not that many. I upgrade my systems once or twice a year. It's not really a lot of time for me. We upgrade them when vulnerabilities and bug fixes show up, which is certainly more than 2/year. Linux distros all certainly require a reboot for a new kernel and some likely require editing of config files. So where is the far more time consuming? In the compiling? Sorry, but I'm not one to sit and watch the lines go by on the terminal. I have better things to do and I do them. If the compilation hits a snag I'd find out why, fix it, and run it again. You missed the bit about 3 reboots, while these don't take 15 mins each, they're still time consuming and disruptive. 1/ reboot after installing new kernel 2/ reboot after installing new world 3/ reboot after rebuilding ports Either you don't have that many fbsd boxes to manage, or you're doing it much better than we are. Let me lay it out for you: We use these boxes as firewalls for our company's projects. Between dev, pre-production, QA and production environments we have roughly 40 of these. They rarely share the same installed ports, nor the same hardware and thus kernel files. Furthermore, when upgrading the CARP Master firewall, we need to plan with the Project Manager a failover to the CARP Backup firewall. Yes, I know about pfsync, yes, we use it, no, it doesn't *instantly* sync sessions for PF. This, is actually quite a pain as well because the Project Managers are loath to swap between firewalls, and we need to do it nightly. These factors + source upgrade = major pain ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Damien Fleuriot wrote: You missed the bit about 3 reboots, while these don't take 15 mins each, they're still time consuming and disruptive. 1/ reboot after installing new kernel 2/ reboot after installing new world 3/ reboot after rebuilding ports Or ... use sysbuild (/usr/src/tools/tools/sysbuild) and just boot once. Hyg' Flemming -- Flemming Jacobsen Email: f...@batmule.dk If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you. -- Oscar Wilde ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/2012 5:41 PM, Damien Fleuriot wrote: Furthermore, when upgrading the CARP Master firewall, we need to plan with the Project Manager a failover to the CARP Backup firewall. Yes, I know about pfsync, yes, we use it, no, it doesn't *instantly* sync sessions for PF. A bit offtopic on this thread, but isn't pfsync designed to do just that? instantly? With instantly I really mean: Communicate every change to the stable table to the other firewall in order to let the stateful connections survive a firewall failover. Obviously, some packets will be lost, but TCP connections should survive, right? I am not arguing, I ask. Nikos ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 05/30/12 20:20, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? Without going into detail,BSD has served our company extremely well for over fifteen years for all server purposes we need. File server, mail, MX, web, routing/firewalls you name it. Never let us down, the stability is just out of this world, the docs are excellent and the people great. So, 1. Stability 2. Ease of upgrades 3. The community and developers A big thank you to all that keeps us running! //per ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/12 6:37 PM, Nikos Vassiliadis wrote: On 5/31/2012 5:41 PM, Damien Fleuriot wrote: Furthermore, when upgrading the CARP Master firewall, we need to plan with the Project Manager a failover to the CARP Backup firewall. Yes, I know about pfsync, yes, we use it, no, it doesn't *instantly* sync sessions for PF. A bit offtopic on this thread, but isn't pfsync designed to do just that? instantly? With instantly I really mean: Communicate every change to the stable table to the other firewall in order to let the stateful connections survive a firewall failover. Obviously, some packets will be lost, but TCP connections should survive, right? I am not arguing, I ask. Nikos Updates aren't instantaneous, they're sent in bundles. This means that when you failover, you lose the connections that have completed a SYN/SYNACK/ACK sequence on your main firewall but which aren't synched on your backup. These connections will continue with the peer sending regular non-syn packets, which your backup-now-master PF will drop. On topic, if anyone has an awesome idea around this, I'm all ears, this exact topic is causing us some level of discomfort at work, when we need to swap firewalls for updates. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 31/05/2012 16:41, Damien Fleuriot wrote: You missed the bit about 3 reboots, while these don't take 15 mins each, they're still time consuming and disruptive. 1/ reboot after installing new kernel 2/ reboot after installing new world 3/ reboot after rebuilding ports If you rebuilt the ports first, then you'ld only have two reboots. Also, while the cautious approach detailed in /usr/src/UPDATING is never wrong, much of the time you can do the upgrade perfectly well by installing world+kernel together and just rebooting once. Obviously this is not a good idea if your machines are in a datacenter many miles away and you don't have console-equivalent access or if you're upgrading over a large delta in versions, or you're making major changes to the kernel config. This sort of operation is something that ZFS boot environment support (recently committed to HEAD, due for MFC within the month) makes much, much safer and easier to deal with. You don't need to do a separate reboot to test the kernel as you've still got an entire kernel+world in the previous BE to fall back on. Cheers, Matthew -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi Everyone,
This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending
it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of
users.
I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which
advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd
like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD.
If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which
would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it?
David
--
1. Stability
2. Security
3. Ease of configuration
... and more ...
4. Lots of good ports, that build and install mostly with NO trouble.
5. Works like ('cause IS) BSD/Solaris, rather than Sys5 (see 3 above)
6. Good lists
7. Great help when I need it
... some history ...
Had been using Solaris on a variety of Suns, when in July 1999 it fell to
me (a hardware designer) to set up a firewall to replace a really
unreliable Windows app-level firewall. Got an old PC, put FreeBSD 3.2 on
it, got Trusted Information Systems' proxies for HTTP and FTP, got it up
and working with only minor problems. Into production in less than a
week. It ran until GE bought the whole company out in late 2001, finally
upgraded to 4.2.
Currently (2012) maintaining a FW based in FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE GENERIC for
a local charity's office. Hardware is a Dell T105. First light was in
2008 using 6.2. No noticeable trouble. The same host also runs Samba
3.3.13 for the LAN users, DHCP, and internal mail. FW is NATing ipfw.
I have been retired since 2002 January, and do this for fun.
FreeBSD has made it so. Thanks, very much indeed, everyone.
Karl Dunn
kd...@acm.org
___
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Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/2012 12:52 PM, Damien Fleuriot wrote: On 5/31/12 6:37 PM, Nikos Vassiliadis wrote: On 5/31/2012 5:41 PM, Damien Fleuriot wrote: Furthermore, when upgrading the CARP Master firewall, we need to plan with the Project Manager a failover to the CARP Backup firewall. Yes, I know about pfsync, yes, we use it, no, it doesn't *instantly* sync sessions for PF. A bit offtopic on this thread, but isn't pfsync designed to do just that? instantly? With instantly I really mean: Communicate every change to the stable table to the other firewall in order to let the stateful connections survive a firewall failover. Obviously, some packets will be lost, but TCP connections should survive, right? I am not arguing, I ask. Nikos Updates aren't instantaneous, they're sent in bundles. This means that when you failover, you lose the connections that have completed a SYN/SYNACK/ACK sequence on your main firewall but which aren't synched on your backup. These connections will continue with the peer sending regular non-syn packets, which your backup-now-master PF will drop. On topic, if anyone has an awesome idea around this, I'm all ears, this exact topic is causing us some level of discomfort at work, when we need to swap firewalls for updates. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org I don't see this option on FreeBSD 9, but on OpenBSD pfsync has a defer flag that would appear to address your issue. The options are as follows: defer Defer transmission of the first packet in a state until a peer has acknowledged that the associated state has been inserted. See pfsync(4) for more information. -defer Do not defer the first packet in a state. This is the default. From pfsync(4) The pfsync interface will attempt to collapse multiple state updates into a single packet where possible. The maximum number of times a single state can be updated before a pfsync packet will be sent out is con- trolled by the maxupd parameter to ifconfig (see ifconfig(8) and the ex- ample below for more details). The sending out of a pfsync packet will be delayed by a maximum of one second. Where more than one firewall might actively handle packets, e.g. with certain ospfd(8), bgpd(8) or carp(4) configurations, it is beneficial to defer transmission of the initial packet of a connection. The pfsync state insert message is sent immediately; the packet is queued until ei- ther this message is acknowledged by another system, or a timeout has ex- pired. This behaviour is enabled with the defer parameter to ifconfig(8). I'm sure this could be ported over. -Nick ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Solaris features in FreeBSD (was: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?)
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 17:20:04 +0200 , Oliver Fromme wrote: But there's one thing that hasn't been mentioned so far, I think: jails. The jails feature was the most important reason why one of our largest customers chose FreeBSD for its server farm instead of Linux. I also use this feature quite a lot on my own boxes to easily confine services and applications into sandboxes, without having to use a full- blown virtualization system with all of its disadvantages. I did mention Solaris features in my list reply, which sort of includes jails in a circuitous way--there's a video somewhere on the tubes where one of the Solaris devs describes zones as jails on steroids or the like. And speaking of Solaris features... On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 19:13:32 +0100 , Matthew Seaman wrote: This sort of operation is something that ZFS boot environment support (recently committed to HEAD, due for MFC within the month) makes much, much safer and easier to deal with. You don't need to do a separate reboot to test the kernel as you've still got an entire kernel+world in the previous BE to fall back on. This is *awesome*. /me removes yet another item from the reasons to use Solaris list. I cannot wait to try this out. -- Thanks and best regards, Chris Nehren ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Because I really like it! ;-) I've been using FreeBSD since the RELEASE-1.0(.5)?, as far as I remember... But, the first BSD I had installed was a 386BSD, on a old 386 computer. Yeah! Version 0.0 or 0.1... God! I'm getting old! Cordeiro Em quarta-feira, 30 de maio de 2012, às 19:20:31, David Chisnall escreveu: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 6:35 AM, Damien Fleuriot m...@my.gd wrote: On 5/31/12 1:20 PM, Claus Guttesen wrote: A regular debian update is 5 minutes + reboot A regular FBSD update is about 1.5 hour + 3 reboots (after installkernel, installworld, rebuild of ports) But how often do you need to As a matter of fact, too often, that's te problem. We have 800 servers and I can't argue that debian's update process is much simpler and faster. Take a look at freebsd-update: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/updating-upgrading-freebsdupdate.html. This tracks release. As I just replied to an off-list mail, we can't use binary upgrades because: 1/ we use custom kernels with a lot of the stuff stripped 2/ we pass custom options to ports, which excludes pre-compiled packages 3/ we don't track release, I'm trying to move our boxes away from it so we can get faster patches, we track 8-STABLE on most boxes Make your own freebsd-update server and build whatever custom system you need. It does not need to be a GENERIC kernel. It does not need to be RELEASE.Then use freebsd-update to update all of your production systems with a single reboot and about 15 minutes (depending on system and disk speed and I have not actually timed it).and it can be done without console access or a single-user boot. Caveats: Systems must be updated from a version the server knows to a version the server knows; both kernel and world. Major version bumps may require re-installation of ports. Security ports and minor updates are trivial. Grenada? -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer E-mail: kob6...@gmail.com ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Flemming Jacobsen f...@batmule.dk writes: Damien Fleuriot wrote: You missed the bit about 3 reboots, while these don't take 15 mins each, they're still time consuming and disruptive. 1/ reboot after installing new kernel 2/ reboot after installing new world 3/ reboot after rebuilding ports Or ... use sysbuild (/usr/src/tools/tools/sysbuild) and just boot once. I respectfully disagree here. Sysbuild makes some assumptions about the partition layout which you'd need to factor in before you created your server. For the average layout (single disk, single partition), sysbuild won't be easy to make work. More generally, it's best not to clutter this interesting thread with delusions of rapidity. Given ports/packages/rpms/etc ... I claim it does not matter what system you use: There's just too much software out there that all has to work together to expect a simple upgrade to take 5 minutes on a well managed production server. I believe the more cogent solution is along these lines: Kevin Oberman kob6...@gmail.com writes: Make your own freebsd-update server and build whatever custom system you need. It does not need to be a GENERIC kernel. It does not need to be RELEASE.Then use freebsd-update to update all of your production systems with a single reboot and about 15 minutes (depending on system and disk speed and I have not actually timed it).and it can be done without console access or a single-user boot. If you take some time and plan your deployment and server layout, a single (even virtualized) server dedicated to building world and ports can help homogenize and streamline upgrades of large numbers of FreeBSD servers. I'd imagine that anything over 10 servers would almost demand this kind of attention to detail, but that's me. -- Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - d...@jetcafe.org The opinions expressed above are entirely my own People complain about time being short, going fast. But when it seems to go slowly they complain that it drags. Let us consider the people, not the supposed movements of time. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:20 PM, David Chisnall thera...@freebsd.orgwrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org For me it is: -Stability -Well-structured OS (i.e. filesystem, kernel and its config, etc) -The ports system These are also the elements that made me start using FreeBSD about a decade ago. So these are mainly consequences of the development strategy of FreeBSD, as opposed to the free for all approach of Linux. Personally, what makes me choose Linux over FreeBSD for laptop usage is the very limited acpi support of FreeBSD (suspend and resume) compared to Linux. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 19:20:31 +0100 , David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, ... and not wrapped at 80 characters. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? 1. Solaris features without being beholden to Oracle. 2. The FreeBSD community focuses more on tech than on licensing and political activism like a certain freeware Unix alike. 3. The ports system does a far better job of balancing tracking recent software releases and stability than other systems of the same sort (most typically exemplified by certain popular Unix alikes). Bonus round, something subjective: 4. Everything feels right and makes sense on a very deep level for me, in a way that never happened with the other Unix and Unix alike OSs I've used. The first item is not the same as when I started using FreeBSD, because those features didn't exist in FreeBSD at the time. The third reason is what actually brought me to FreeBSD, after I became frustrated at the seeming inability of Unix alike maintainers to maintain that balance of recent software and stability (Ubuntu didn't exist at the time, and the less time I spend using that the better). -- Thanks and best regards, Chris Nehren ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
David Chisnall thera...@freebsd.org wrote: If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? 1. Large number of ports, including obscure programs other package system don't have. 2. Relatively straightforward system configuration (i.e. rc.conf), as opposed to options scattered across multiple files and tools. 3. Port options. I don't want to run HAL and friends for example; on FreeBSD I can skip them. Why don't you ask about top 3 things we hate about FreeBSD? Listing negative sides in advocacy materials would be a refreshing change. Are they the same as when you first started using it? Nope. It was mostly blind chance. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
David Chisnall schreef: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org Why i use and still use FreeBSD 1) stability 2) ease of use 3) ZFS 4) Community 5) I does the things i need. The first encounter with FreeBSD was with FreeBSD 4.5 if i recall correct. I did try a lot of Linux distro's in that time, and could not find a distro that suits me well. I did use redhat 6 to 7 and Suse also tried Slackware, and gentoo that was new at that time. But each distro had it quircks, redhat and dependency hell, suse had yast which was horrible back then. Gentoo had way to many knobs you need to set to get it compiled and so on. Then i did try FreeBSD and it did what i needed back then, the installer was something i need to figure out, but once i got the idea of slices and so on, it did what i needed. Upgrading was easy, rebuilding the system worked and so on. It never let me down. I was a happy camper, and settled with FreeBSD. Till today i still can do all i want. Mail server, Web server, MailScanner server, samba server, ISCSI server and NFS server is what we need today, and FreeBSD does it all. Now with ZFS , things got even better. Did try some Linux distro's, but only for the desktop. Linux Mint is what i use on the laptop now. As long as there is no need to use Linux to get things done i stick with FreeBSD. regards Johan ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 05/30/2012 12:20 PM, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org For us, stability is the biggest reason. Stability in terms of not only reliability, but also the design philosophy and consistency. I really appreciate the cleanliness of FreeBSD, and what seems to be a well thought out and well deployed base. To me, FreeBSD seems conservative in that a lot of design is tried and true, but also progressive at the same time where it counts (e.g. ZFS). I don't get the feeling of hasty implementations that I have with other systems. We replaced a Linux file server (which replaced several Mac Xserves) with a FreeBSD box in the recent past and I've had zero issues with stability, reliability, or performance. Whereas before, it was always a struggle to maintain any of those, and with constant maintenance. This is on the same hardware with the same userbase. This is just my two cents as an end user sysadmin with no development experience. Josh ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/31/2012 1:20, David Chisnall wrote: I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? 1. High performance with security and stability focus -- truly makes it the ideal server platform 2. The ports system (and supporting tools like portupgrade, portaudit, etc) 3. The OS makes sense (as Chris N. mentioned). The file system layout, tools, etc are consistent. There is so much other stuff too. Like PF and CARP, ZFS and more ... a kick-ass combo of features and very server-focused. As a professional admin FreeBSD is a pleasure to work with day in and day out. I've never heard a admins of other OSes say that :P ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Wed, 30 May 2012 13:59:01 -0500, Chris Nehren apeiron+freebsd-sta...@isuckatdomains.net wrote: 4. Everything feels right and makes sense on a very deep level for me, in a way that never happened with the other Unix and Unix alike OSs I've used. Bingo. For me: 1) Integration. The OS is integrated very well all around. How many utilities on Linux are required to replace the full functionality of the BSD ifconfig ? 2) Ports. We have customers with very different requirements; we don't have to run different Linux distros to meet their needs in a way that is supported by the package management system. This makes the job as a sysadmin and our infrastructure very consistent. 3) Features. PF is indispensable, and ZFS is a great bonus. System utilities, too: sockstat, systat, gstat, BSD's top, etc. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/30/12, David Chisnall thera...@freebsd.org wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? Hi! Likes (sorry, not only 3 item): -- 1) FreeBSD is NOT Linux = FreeBSD is stable, reliable, simple (there are no automated brainfucks... like udev, hal and dbus in base system) 2) has a clean source, and FreeBSD is maintainable: if there are a working driver in N+2 version, I have a much bigger chance, that working in N too 3) is highly configurable (~ 1) ), I like rc.conf and sysctl (linux's procfs and sysfs is a chaos ...) 4) FreeBSD has a ports system, that contained KDE3 5) well documented 6) not fragmented as Linux, (relation to many distro, that not have idea/goal) 7) not GPL 8) FreeBSD is a complete system, and not just a kernel + random thing from everywhere, and not hackish Are they the same as when you first started using it? --- yes David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 30 May 2012 19:20, David Chisnall thera...@freebsd.org wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? You might not have wanted opinions from developers... but 1) Complete base system-- if I mess up badly with ports I can delete them all and still have a usable system to recover from 2) Simplicity of configuration-- mostly configured with flat text files rather than directories full of conf files 3) Friendly community; easy to get support from people who really know what they're doing. Chris ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Wed, 30 May 2012 19:20:31 +0100 David Chisnall thera...@freebsd.org wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org 1) Stability in the meaning of does not break config semantics from one second to the other without mentioning. 2) Help from the list which not only solves your problem, but teaches! also. 3) Features like ZFS, PF, periodic, ZFS ... I could name many more, but you wanted the top three and I am not really sure about the order, so I just typed down those which came to mind first. BTW, I got hooked coming from Gentoo, so I am sure I would miss and then list many more FreeBSD-likables when I would be forced away. Cheers, Christopher ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
1. The community - Unlike Linux which is very fragmented by all the different flavours and hence individual communities, FreeBSD has one community who are always happy to help with hints tips and advice. This simply cant be beaten! 2. Stability - There's always issue with any OS but in our many years of using FreeBSD, we've never had any issues which haven't been able to fix quickly with the help of the community. 3. Easy and quick to install servers - No other OS comes close with regards to simplicity of install to get a server up and running. Initially we used the standard sysinstall, which while had its quirks was still many times faster and easier to use than any Linux installer I've tried. Recently we've been using a small custom version of mfsBSD (http://mfsbsd.vx.sk/) which enables us to do base machine install on any hardware we run in minutes. If you want a 4th I'd have to say ZFS support, the flexibility and simplicity this has brought to the management of storage under FreeBSD has been a godsend! This is the big new one for us :) Regard Steve - Original Message - From: David Chisnall thera...@freebsd.org To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 7:20 PM Subject: Why Are You Using FreeBSD? Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org This e.mail is private and confidential between Multiplay (UK) Ltd. and the person or entity to whom it is addressed. In the event of misdirection, the recipient is prohibited from using, copying, printing or otherwise disseminating it or any information contained in it. In the event of misdirection, illegible or incomplete transmission please telephone +44 845 868 1337 or return the E.mail to postmas...@multiplay.co.uk. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
- You can (change how to) compile /tailor almost everything, yet whole OS doesn't feel fragmented. - Provided you have massive ;) WITHOUT_* stack in make.conf you can have pretty frugal system. (hal, dbus etc.) - Native Opera support, yes it really mattered to me, and still matters. Web browser is usually single most used application. - Compiling base system from source and customising e.g. kernel is actually supported (not like in OpenBSD, which (for valid reasons!) is rather discouraged). - You can actually have all (ports base) binaries on particular system compiled from source on the same machine, not only it's supported, it's popular route. - Huge ports system, mostly simple sane (vanilla sources, clear structure). - Portmaster. - Good Thinkpad support usually. - STABLE branch, every day is release day ;) -- View this message in context: http://freebsd.1045724.n5.nabble.com/Why-Are-You-Using-FreeBSD-tp5713439p5713522.html Sent from the freebsd-stable mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
- Actually somewhat caring about performance too... (not like OpenBSD). - True unix pedigree, in mostly still retained philosophically. P.S. I'm not bashing OpenBSD, in fact, it's one of my favorite systems, just FreeBSD in it's default form/ src update route is closer to how I would like this system to work/ at this moment. Fully binary system with uniform packages/configuration has it's non disputable merits. Add to this no particular emphasis on performance and OpenBSD could have upper hand for me in that scenario. -- View this message in context: http://freebsd.1045724.n5.nabble.com/Why-Are-You-Using-FreeBSD-tp5713439p5713525.html Sent from the freebsd-stable mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Wed, 30 May 2012, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, I came to FreeBSD nearly 20 years ago because it had text-mode (aka command line, console, etc.) apps and I wanted to avoid GUIs for applications that are not essentially graphic in nature. The ability to switch for applications essentially graphic (paint, image manipulation, etc.) and back for everything else (writing) without rebooting was very attractive. There is not any graphics font that can put 2000 characters (80x25) on one screen legibly - and that has not changed. The native editors on BSD (vi, emacs) are pretty horrible -- imagine the Frankenstein that thought I'll just write an editor in Lisp! But once I discovered Joe, it was smooth sailing. There is no GUI file manager as good as lynx ./ . This is still why I use FreeBSD. I tried linuxes, but found keyboard mapping really opaque. Now, I won't use linuxes because they have abandoned text-mode for rasterized text -- which is just as horrible as GUIs -- and the linux distributions just assume you are trying to run Gnome, completely ignoring formerly text-mode, now rasterized applications. Unfortunately FreeBSD seems to be headed this way and I will have to hop off the upgrade cycle at some version and hope that I die before it becomes orphaned. -- Lars Eighner http://www.larseighner.com/index.html 8800 N IH35 APT 1191 AUSTIN TX 78753-5266 ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/30/2012 11:20 AM, David Chisnall wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? David___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org SMP support (pause) new (longer pause) I spent as little time as possible in version 5.x. For me there are a few reasons I like FreeBSD. I was first introduced to FreeBSD by a coworker in 1997 or so. I had tried a bit of Linux before that. I was working for a SunOS/Solaris using ISP at the time; so when I tried FreeBSD it did seem to make more sense to me. The keys are these. The filesystem layout just makes much more intuitive sense to me. If I want a barebones system where I just add what I want to it, that is easily available. Minimal install + packages/ports I need has been my approach for awhile. Although I have gotten in trouble with the FreeBSD ports/packages system, the tools that FreeBSD includes make it much easier to recover from package dependency messes than the Linux version so lovingly called RPM hell The stable version is pretty reliable; I have been tracking -stable on a couple home mail servers for several years, perhaps a decade. In all that time, I only once had a serious problem, caused by drive detection changes; I used ee to edit some files and I was all set. Brian Whalen ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 07:20:31PM +0100, David Chisnall wrote: If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? 1) Using it doesn't require changing me (well, at least change is gradual and continuous.) (BSD since '86, even though the hardware dies every few years.) 2) Incremental updates from source are easy. (What's running corresponds to the source on the system, so I can fix breakage as I find it. Not that that's common.) 3) ZFS turns out to be very cool, and seems to work really well. (3) is new, but (1) and (2) have been there since the beginning (since it was the patchkit.) [Another change, not listed among the three most-liked things, but still something that I like equivocally, is that I've stopped fighting GUIs, and relegated my FreeBSD boxes to servers. GUI work I've delegated to Macs. That could yet change back/again, if Macs keep getting worse...] Cheers, -- Andrew ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Why Are You Using FreeBSD?
On 5/30/2012 1:26 PM, Oliver Pinter wrote: On 5/30/12, David Chisnallthera...@freebsd.org wrote: Hi Everyone, This is off-topic, so please feel free to disregard it, but I'm sending it to this list in the hope that it will reach a largish number of users. I am currently looking at updating some of our advocacy material (which advertises exciting new features like SMP support), and before I do I'd like to get a better feel for why the rest of you are using FreeBSD. If you had to list the three things you most like about FreeBSD, which would you pick? Are they the same as when you first started using it? Hi! Likes (sorry, not only 3 item): -- 1) FreeBSD is NOT Linux = FreeBSD is stable, reliable, simple (there are no automated brainfucks... like udev, hal and dbus in base system) 2) has a clean source, and FreeBSD is maintainable: if there are a working driver in N+2 version, I have a much bigger chance, that working in N too 3) is highly configurable (~ 1) ), I like rc.conf and sysctl (linux's procfs and sysfs is a chaos ...) 4) FreeBSD has a ports system, that contained KDE3 5) well documented 6) not fragmented as Linux, (relation to many distro, that not have idea/goal) 7) not GPL 8) FreeBSD is a complete system, and not just a kernel + random thing from everywhere, and not hackish Are they the same as when you first started using it? --- yes Seconding David above, #7 is a big deal. I heard John Maddog Hall speak in person a few years back in San Diego re GPL3 and just walked out of there thinking scratching my head. Brian ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
