7 ms·

FreeBSD 9.1 Release Announcement

134 points by udp 14y ago

protomyth 14y ago
"Please note that precompiled third-party packages are not available for 9.1-RELEASE at the time of release. See the Availability section below for further details." "With the exception of systems relating to the building and testing of packages, all FreeBSD.org infrastructure has now been brought back online. A full audit of the third party package build infrastructure code ("pointyhat") and package testing infrastructure ("redports") continues, and neither system will be brought back online until audits are complete."
Nux 14y ago
No kvm virtio drivers?
- olgeni 14y ago
  For 9.1 they are available as emulators/virtio-kmod; 9-STABLE has them in the tree (I used both recently).
antonios 14y ago
Pretty nice feature list, for a point release. Make sure you check out the new stuff coming in FreeBSD 10: http://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD10 http://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD10
- antonios 14y ago
  More user-friendly page: http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10 http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10
  - stock_toaster 14y ago
    Thanks. Can't wait for "SMP-friendly pf firewall". Yay!
  - kps 14y ago
    It will be interesting to see whether variable symlinks can bring some Plan9ish filesystem elegance to *nix.
Luyt 14y ago
I use FreeBSD on my servers, most of them with ZFS. I wish there was some facility (like in Solaris) than as soon as a harddisk in a mirrorset fails, a spare is automatically swapped in. I will probably have to write that myself ;-)
- antonios 14y ago
  Not necessarily :-) There's a ZFS fault management daemon up and coming in version 10. Look at the very bottom for the link to the source code in this page: http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10 http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10
stevenleeg 14y ago
For most simple servers/projects I use Debian/some sort of linux, so I'm pretty unknowledgeable but curious about the BSD side of things. What are the advantages/differences of using bsd over any other linux distro? Edit: For anyone interested, I actually Googled the question and found a pretty interesting article: http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01 http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01
- BarkMore 14y ago
  ZFS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS) is one advantage of FreeBSD.
- gonzo 14y ago
  Actual design and architecture is the main 'feature'.
- merlincorey 14y ago
  That article is still fairly good of a read, with a couple things slightly out of date, which I will note here simply for pedantry or anyone interested. BSD no longer uses CVS; FreeBSD specifically has moved to SVN for their primary revision control system, and CVS and related tools (such as csup) are deprecated and in some cases disabled. Along with that, linux kernel is now in git, not bitkeeper. While source is still the "base" method of installing and updating a FreeBSD system, and it will certainly always be available; now, binary base system and add-on utilities are becoming more popular. Specifically, `freebsd-update` can be used to update the base system's binaries and source. `pkg-ng` adds `apt-get` like binary package management. ZFS is definitely one of the major things that has FreeBSD on all of my systems. I even run ZFS on single drive laptops: pool: zroot state: ONLINE scan: none requested config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM zroot ONLINE 0 0 0 ada0p3 ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors
  - pestaa 14y ago
    What benefits ZFS brings on a single drive laptop? I was informed it is mainly designed for high traffic file servers with redundancy and so forth.
hosay123 14y ago
For anyone interested in high throughput/low latency networking, netmap ( http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/ http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/ ) looks really exciting in combination with a userspace TCP stack (e.g. unetstack). Pity I have no applications that could use it, would love to experiment.
- justincormack 14y ago
  Not sure I see why you would want to use it with a userspace network stack, I am sure at that point kernel networking is going to be faster. Netmap seems more useful for bridging, logging and UDP applications to me...
  - hosay123 14y ago
    Localizing packet processing significantly improves cache performance, in addition to avoiding copies and context switches. Receiving data from a socket almost always necessitates it being copied from a SKB to userspace memory, and prior to that from the driver's rx ring to a SKB. Grep for all references to 'cache' in http://lwn.net/Articles/169961/ http://lwn.net/Articles/169961/ which is Van Jacobsen's earlier work on a system of comparable design. Another (insanely more complex) implementation is http://www.openonload.org/ http://www.openonload.org/
    - justincormack 14y ago
      Ah thanks for that, hadn't realised that was a use case too, only started looking at this stuff the other day...
  - ishbits 14y ago
    Wonder if it would be useful for a user land network stack that paralleled what it could b
pestaa 14y ago
Where are good, popular and cheap options to run FreeBSD in a VPS? (From the three should I pick any two?)
- msbarnett 14y ago
  Tilaa (http://tilaa.nl http://tilaa.nl) is my go-to for a few reasons. It's not as popular/well known as it ought to be, at least in English. There's also ARP Networks (http://www.arpnetworks.com http://www.arpnetworks.com), which seems to have a good reputation, and RootBSD (https://www.rootbsd.net https://www.rootbsd.net), which seems expensive for what you get. I haven't personally tried either.
  - pestaa 14y ago
    Tilaa looks excellent! Thanks for the pointer. Can you please describe your experience with them in some detail?
    - msbarnett 14y ago
      I don't have the energy to type up a big long thing. Been with them over a year no problems encountered in that time, network seems stable and performant, they do not appear to oversell. If you have specific questions I'll try to answer them.
  - nomadlogic 14y ago
    I can give a huge thumbs up for ARPnet. They are based in downtown LA (and peer @ 1 Wilshire and I think they also are part of the Any2Net exchange from CoreSite), they also fully support IPv6 on VPC's as well as managed servers. I've had both from them and have found support to be excellent. Honestly can't say enough good things about these guys.
- olgeni 14y ago
  I tried both CloudSigma and ElasticHosts and they seem to work fine with 8.x and 9.x. (at least on 8.x I had to move kern.timecounter.hardware away from HPET)
rauar 14y ago
Which version of ZFS does 9.1 implement (could not find any info on that) ? Want to replace OpenIndiana b151 with FreeBSD 9.1 and reconnect my ZFS storage...
- Freaky 14y ago
  v28 - the last version released under the CDDL. You should be fine.
  - rauar 14y ago
    Thanks
  - rauar 14y ago
    Solaris Nevada b151 is on version 32 :(
  - rauar 14y ago
    Moved on to ZFS on Linux. FreeBSD does not support sharesmb.
    - Freaky 14y ago
      Something wrong with Samba?
checker659 14y ago
Although my research in this case only consists of a quick google search, I can't seem to find any information on the Capsicum (sandboxing) project. I think I read somewhere that they were going to be publishing a userspace library / make the feature non-experimental etc in 9.1. However, I see no mention of it at all in the release notes. Does any one know what the state of that project is?
4ad 14y ago
I'm very happy to see the new ZFS enhancements imported from illumos, but I am very sad to see nothing about DTrace.
rbanffy 14y ago
I really would like not having to choose between Gnome Shell and ZFS. :-( How is device (ethernet, wireless, Intel GPU) support on laptops?
- emaste 14y ago
  I'm running FreeBSD-CURRENT on a Thinkpad X220 and have no issues with any of the built-in peripherals. This laptop has an i5-2540M. The e1000 Ethernet is supported by the em(4) driver and I have a "Centrino Ultimate-N 6300" supported by iwn(4). The Intel GPU support was merged back to stable/9 in time for 9.1.
  - meaty 14y ago
    One of them wil be replacing my T61 then. Thanks for the report :)
  - cturner 14y ago
    Thanks, how about suspend/resume?
    - emaste 14y ago
      Right now suspend / resume is non-functional from a user's perspective: that is, suspend works, and I can resume, but the screen does not turn back on. I hope that this can be fixed for 9.2. Some related recent links: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2012-December/038530.html http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2012-Dece... http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/174504 http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/174504
- darklajid 14y ago
  I'm running Arch w/ Gnome Shell on this Thinkpad T520. I use ZFS on Arch (although not on this laptop, actually). I don't think you _need_ to choose?
  - rbanffy 14y ago

134 points by udp 14y ago

"Please note that precompiled third-party packages are not available for 9.1-RELEASE at the time of release. See the Availability section below for further details." "With the exception of systems relating to the building and testing of packages, all FreeBSD.org infrastructure has now been brought back online. A full audit of the third party package build infrastructure code ("pointyhat") and package testing infrastructure ("redports") continues, and neither system will be brought back online until audits are complete."

Nux 14y ago

No kvm virtio drivers?

olgeni 14y ago
For 9.1 they are available as emulators/virtio-kmod; 9-STABLE has them in the tree (I used both recently).

antonios 14y ago

Pretty nice feature list, for a point release. Make sure you check out the new stuff coming in FreeBSD 10: http://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD10 http://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD10

antonios 14y ago
More user-friendly page: http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10 http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10
- stock_toaster 14y ago
  Thanks. Can't wait for "SMP-friendly pf firewall". Yay!
- kps 14y ago
  It will be interesting to see whether variable symlinks can bring some Plan9ish filesystem elegance to *nix.

Luyt 14y ago

I use FreeBSD on my servers, most of them with ZFS. I wish there was some facility (like in Solaris) than as soon as a harddisk in a mirrorset fails, a spare is automatically swapped in. I will probably have to write that myself ;-)

antonios 14y ago
Not necessarily :-) There's a ZFS fault management daemon up and coming in version 10. Look at the very bottom for the link to the source code in this page: http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10 http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10

stevenleeg 14y ago

For most simple servers/projects I use Debian/some sort of linux, so I'm pretty unknowledgeable but curious about the BSD side of things. What are the advantages/differences of using bsd over any other linux distro? Edit: For anyone interested, I actually Googled the question and found a pretty interesting article: http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01 http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01

BarkMore 14y ago
ZFS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS) is one advantage of FreeBSD.
gonzo 14y ago
Actual design and architecture is the main 'feature'.
merlincorey 14y ago
That article is still fairly good of a read, with a couple things slightly out of date, which I will note here simply for pedantry or anyone interested. BSD no longer uses CVS; FreeBSD specifically has moved to SVN for their primary revision control system, and CVS and related tools (such as csup) are deprecated and in some cases disabled. Along with that, linux kernel is now in git, not bitkeeper. While source is still the "base" method of installing and updating a FreeBSD system, and it will certainly always be available; now, binary base system and add-on utilities are becoming more popular. Specifically, `freebsd-update` can be used to update the base system's binaries and source. `pkg-ng` adds `apt-get` like binary package management. ZFS is definitely one of the major things that has FreeBSD on all of my systems. I even run ZFS on single drive laptops: pool: zroot state: ONLINE scan: none requested config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM zroot ONLINE 0 0 0 ada0p3 ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors
- pestaa 14y ago
  What benefits ZFS brings on a single drive laptop? I was informed it is mainly designed for high traffic file servers with redundancy and so forth.

hosay123 14y ago

For anyone interested in high throughput/low latency networking, netmap ( http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/ http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/ ) looks really exciting in combination with a userspace TCP stack (e.g. unetstack). Pity I have no applications that could use it, would love to experiment.

justincormack 14y ago
Not sure I see why you would want to use it with a userspace network stack, I am sure at that point kernel networking is going to be faster. Netmap seems more useful for bridging, logging and UDP applications to me...
- hosay123 14y ago
  Localizing packet processing significantly improves cache performance, in addition to avoiding copies and context switches. Receiving data from a socket almost always necessitates it being copied from a SKB to userspace memory, and prior to that from the driver's rx ring to a SKB. Grep for all references to 'cache' in http://lwn.net/Articles/169961/ http://lwn.net/Articles/169961/ which is Van Jacobsen's earlier work on a system of comparable design. Another (insanely more complex) implementation is http://www.openonload.org/ http://www.openonload.org/
  - justincormack 14y ago
    Ah thanks for that, hadn't realised that was a use case too, only started looking at this stuff the other day...
- ishbits 14y ago
  Wonder if it would be useful for a user land network stack that paralleled what it could b

pestaa 14y ago

Where are good, popular and cheap options to run FreeBSD in a VPS? (From the three should I pick any two?)

msbarnett 14y ago
Tilaa (http://tilaa.nl http://tilaa.nl) is my go-to for a few reasons. It's not as popular/well known as it ought to be, at least in English. There's also ARP Networks (http://www.arpnetworks.com http://www.arpnetworks.com), which seems to have a good reputation, and RootBSD (https://www.rootbsd.net https://www.rootbsd.net), which seems expensive for what you get. I haven't personally tried either.
- pestaa 14y ago
  Tilaa looks excellent! Thanks for the pointer. Can you please describe your experience with them in some detail?
  - msbarnett 14y ago
    I don't have the energy to type up a big long thing. Been with them over a year no problems encountered in that time, network seems stable and performant, they do not appear to oversell. If you have specific questions I'll try to answer them.
- nomadlogic 14y ago
  I can give a huge thumbs up for ARPnet. They are based in downtown LA (and peer @ 1 Wilshire and I think they also are part of the Any2Net exchange from CoreSite), they also fully support IPv6 on VPC's as well as managed servers. I've had both from them and have found support to be excellent. Honestly can't say enough good things about these guys.
olgeni 14y ago
I tried both CloudSigma and ElasticHosts and they seem to work fine with 8.x and 9.x. (at least on 8.x I had to move kern.timecounter.hardware away from HPET)

rauar 14y ago

Which version of ZFS does 9.1 implement (could not find any info on that) ? Want to replace OpenIndiana b151 with FreeBSD 9.1 and reconnect my ZFS storage...

Freaky 14y ago
v28 - the last version released under the CDDL. You should be fine.
- rauar 14y ago
  Thanks
- rauar 14y ago
  Solaris Nevada b151 is on version 32 :(
- rauar 14y ago
  Moved on to ZFS on Linux. FreeBSD does not support sharesmb.
  - Freaky 14y ago
    Something wrong with Samba?

checker659 14y ago

Although my research in this case only consists of a quick google search, I can't seem to find any information on the Capsicum (sandboxing) project. I think I read somewhere that they were going to be publishing a userspace library / make the feature non-experimental etc in 9.1. However, I see no mention of it at all in the release notes. Does any one know what the state of that project is?

4ad 14y ago

I'm very happy to see the new ZFS enhancements imported from illumos, but I am very sad to see nothing about DTrace.

rbanffy 14y ago

I really would like not having to choose between Gnome Shell and ZFS. :-( How is device (ethernet, wireless, Intel GPU) support on laptops?

emaste 14y ago
I'm running FreeBSD-CURRENT on a Thinkpad X220 and have no issues with any of the built-in peripherals. This laptop has an i5-2540M. The e1000 Ethernet is supported by the em(4) driver and I have a "Centrino Ultimate-N 6300" supported by iwn(4). The Intel GPU support was merged back to stable/9 in time for 9.1.
- meaty 14y ago
  One of them wil be replacing my T61 then. Thanks for the report :)
- cturner 14y ago
  Thanks, how about suspend/resume?
  - emaste 14y ago
    Right now suspend / resume is non-functional from a user's perspective: that is, suspend works, and I can resume, but the screen does not turn back on. I hope that this can be fixed for 9.2. Some related recent links: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2012-December/038530.html http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2012-Dece... http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/174504 http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/174504
darklajid 14y ago
I'm running Arch w/ Gnome Shell on this Thinkpad T520. I use ZFS on Arch (although not on this laptop, actually). I don't think you _need_ to choose?
- rbanffy 14y ago