Is 5.2 worth it?

existenz

existenz

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I am not going to say we need to stop development on 5.2 but we all know that the 5.x series is more or less beta. I am not sure that 5.2 is worth the work or should be available. After the last few weeks playing with 5.2 and having all the issues we are having in-house I don't think for the day to day operation we will install it on any server. It is very buggy, many people can't compile custom kernels, plus the performance of a server is slower on 5.2 than 4.9 for us.

Just wondering if you folks think the effort to support 5.2 is worth it? I know 5.1 is not perfect but not nearly as bad as 5.2. Plus I hear that 5.3-RELEASE should be sometime in the next few months?
 
Don't ask where my knowledge is with FBSD development, maybe someday I will find it ;)

A general question for FBSD users though, are all these versions actually supported (4.8 through 5.2 / 5.3?) or is it copying the idea of fedora with an OS update every few weeks?

Seems like they are flying through versions.... and im here with very minimal knowledge of FBSD wondering ;)

Chris
 
What has happened is that the 5.0 project branched around the start of the FreeBSD 4.0 series. They cut the code and start working on a new project in parrellel. There are many goals of the 5.x series but it is NOT stable as the 4.x series (nor should it be used on servers). I am not sure about RH or other Linux's but FreeBSD projects are not necessarily in sequence. 4.1 and on were updates to the 4.0 code 4.9 being the 10th stable production release.

5.x is of a different code and NOT a decendant of 4.9. It contains tons of shared code from Apple's Darwin along with other major changes to the core of the OS.

As for the code we have basically 2 versions Stable and Current. The Current contains all the new improvements but has not been fixed of all the bugs and other problems. Then Stable is when the code is frozen and additions are only added after testing has been done. 4.x went Stable after 4.0 but because of some confusion at that time they are waiting to make the 5.x branch Stable till (rumors I have read) around 5.3.

Bottom line till the 5.x branch is declared Stable we could be fighting a battle. I have NO problem with DA on 5.x but I wonder with all problem (here and many other places) that 5.2 is worth supporting. At our office we have not been able to get 5.2 to run stable on any machine and forget compiling a new kernel.

Just a thought...
 
Please use the Release version of FreeBSD 5.2.. Some people get confused about the naming conventions. Consider Current as an "O it compiles, let's ship it" branch and Stable is you have the latest bleeding edge software but it is not tested and optimized for production.

So in short:

RELEASE=Production servers/optimized and tested code
STABLE=Bleeding edge / latest software not optimized and tested
CURRENT=Development

Hope it helps a little..
 
My biggest problem is that my IDE controller (SiS 651 chipset...) is not supported by 4.9, so I'll have to go for 5.2
 
This is just one example...I know their are walk-arounds but I feel like many in the community, 5.2 is a bad release it should have been tested a bit. Just my 2 cents :D
 
While 5.x branch is a new technology release, it is in no way unstable. I have been running 5.x every since 5.1 came out. It is the only choice for people wanting to use FBSD and Dual Procs. 4.x is just to weak in the dual proc area.

As for whether DA should support it, of course it should. The 5.x branch is the future of FreeBSD and with RH pulling what they did I have seen a large increase in FBSD in the hosting industry.

Other then initial install install issues that were half my fault DA has run almost flawlesy on 5.1. The only bug I have found was with backup restores. Other then that pefect.

Yes 5.2 does make some changes, but those changes are here to stay so it's better to deal with them now then wait till later.

Also make sure you are running the RELEASE version. If your running any other branch you are asking for problems. And from what I understand 5.3 should be the final version that they consider a 100% release version with no more new technology tag. At least that's the way they said the version numbers were gonna work out to be awhile back.
 
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From the Early Adopters Page:

FreeBSD 5.X marks the first new major version of FreeBSD in over two years. Besides a number of new features, it also contains a number of major developments in the underlying system architecture. Along with these advances, however, comes a system that incorporates a tremendous amount of new and not-widely-tested code. Compared to the existing line of 4.X releases, the first few 5.X releases may have regressions in areas of stability, performance, and occasionally functionality.

For these reasons, the Release Engineering Team <[email protected]> specifically discourages users from updating from older FreeBSD releases to 5.2-RELEASE unless they are aware of (and prepared to deal with) possible regressions in the newer releases. Specifically, for more conservative users, we recommend running 4.X releases (such as 4.9-RELEASE) for the near-term future. We feel that such users are probably best served by upgrading to 5.X only after a 5-STABLE development branch has been created; this may be around the time of 5.3-RELEASE.
 
Xuru said:
While 5.x branch is a new technology release, it is in no way unstable. I have been running 5.x every since 5.1 came out. It is the only choice for people wanting to use FBSD and Dual Procs. 4.x is just to weak in the dual proc area.
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I don't want to argue with you but it is very unstable and has crashed to the point where few boxes needed reinstalls. We have found out each time the cause and it went back to 5.2's changes. I have found issues with kernel's crashing and taking down boxes.

We have our NOC full of FeeBSD boxes and all of the 5.2 boxes we have tested and a few 5.1 have major issues. We like to adopt and belive in the 5.x branch but 5.2 was a waste of time. The FreeBSD group admits as well as most how many issues need to be solved. We honestly have not found that many problems with 5.1-RELEASE.

As for whether DA should support it, of course it should. The 5.x branch is the future of FreeBSD and with RH pulling what they did I have seen a large increase in FBSD in the hosting industry.
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I never said SHOULD it support 5.x. I think it should not necessarly be supported on 5.2 for production boxes. I do believe we should be beta testing it and working for 5.3.

Other then initial install install issues that were half my fault DA has run almost flawlesy on 5.1. The only bug I have found was with backup restores. Other then that pefect.
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Runs perfectly here also on 5.1. Our 5.2 boxes have no problems with DA but rather FBSD. The issue is Mark, John are going to have to support something that has issues from the start.

Yes 5.2 does make some changes, but those changes are here to stay so it's better to deal with them now then wait till later.

Also make sure you are running the RELEASE version. If your running any other branch you are asking for problems. And from what I understand 5.3 should be the final version that they consider a 100% release version with no more new technology tag. At least that's the way they said the version numbers were gonna work out to be awhile back.
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This is what I have heard also. 5.3 the branch should become STABLE. Again I think the 5.x is a great build, I am worried that people less experienced than us will install 5.2 because it is the "latest" release and have all kinds of issues that they will want support with and are not a fault of DA but rather FBSD.

ps...anyone try the new scheduler that will be included in 5.3. I hear it has better SMP support.
 
"FreeBSD 5.2.1 RC is now available, and now can be downloaded from the FreeBSD site and mirrors, or if you are currently running FreeBSD 5.2 (or for that matter some earlier versions) you can simply cvsup to it. The upcoming 5.2.1 release should fix a number of outstanding bugs in the 5.2 release, and this is a chance to make sure those bugs get fixed!" - From Slashdot
 
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