DirectAdmin and FreeBSD 4.11 vs. 6.1

Hi Everyone!

I have a few questions regarding anyones experience with DirectAdmin on FreeBSD 6.1 that I hope someone can share some insight.

I have used DA with FreeBSD 4.11 and ABSOLUTELY LOVE the combination! I just had to reboot a server after running for a little over a year - rock solid to say the least.

Now that DA supports FreeBSD 6.1 I am interested in moving in this direction due to an easier OS upgrade path in the future. However, I know there were some issues (have read the forum here) with FreeBSD 6.X early on.

1.) Has anyone experienced any stability issues with the FreeBSD 6.1/DA combination?

2.) How much of a pain is it to revert back to MySQL 4.X vs. 5.X that is installed with DA/FreeBSD 6.1 (I believe this to be the case)?

3.) Can anyone provide any recommendations for any issues other than the licensing "issue" that I may face?

4.) Would anyone suggest that continuing with 4.11 is a better option at this time?

I know these are somewhat general questions (with a fair amount of "open endedness). The reason why I ask is that I have taken a poorly partitioned server, upgraded essential components and have ended up with a very reliable hosting platform, that is very forgiving of my "goof-ups" (e.g. I have been able to fix things .

Thank you tremendously for any input you can provide. I wouldn't have been able to make it this past year without the assistance I have found in this forum - you guys are great!

1.) Has anyone experienced any stability issues with the FreeBSD 6.1/DA combination?

Once it is installed it runs smoothly without any problems. I have used 4.x 5.x and 6.x combined with DA and even though I still consider 4.x to be the best version of FreeBSD I have found that moving to 6.1 wasn't too much hassle and I haven't had any stability issues yet.

2.) How much of a pain is it to revert back to MySQL 4.X vs. 5.X that is installed with DA/FreeBSD 6.1 (I believe this to be the case)?

Unknown as I use 5.x but from what I have read just backup your databases with 4.x compatibility and just install 4.x and reload mysql backups.

3.) Can anyone provide any recommendations for any issues other than the licensing "issue" that I may face?

- If your running one of the latest mysql 5.x versions customapache won't work but this won't be a problem if your using 4.x.

- It may be fixed now but webalizer wasn't installing during the setup. Fix in this thread:

http://www.directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13519

- After the install I went to start apache and it errored out with something along the lines of "no group named admin" so I created a group called admin:

pw groupadd admin

(Possibly fixed now but one line resolves it if you get that error)

Other than that from what I can remember it was smooth sailing (Except for the licence issue but that seems to happen randomly on most versions of FreeBSD).

4.) Would anyone suggest that continuing with 4.11 is a better option at this time?

Definately not a good option as 4.x will be EOL very soon.


Basically just go to the 6.x branch as it will be supported for a few years and it works well.


Steve

Hi Steve,

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. You made some really good points that really hit home - especially the EOL of 4.11 (which I found out to potentially be in Jan of 2007).

As a result we just installed our new server with FreeBSD 6.1 and are preparing for the DA install. So far everything appears to be working very well (heck - I have SSH access from outside the data center so I am a "happy camper!" .

Thanks for pointing out the thread for webalizer - this will come in very handy tonight (yes this is "D-Day).

I will post back with the results. I am keeping track of every step of the install - from the base OS through DA and I can post when completed if anyone is interested. I am definitely learning the benefits of good documentation!

Thank you again for all the help - it is GREATLY appreciated!

Michael

Let us know how you go and if any of the bugs I listed are still there.

Steve