FreeBSD – the unknown Giant

PC-BSD 8.0 – Alpha2

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Gerard

pc-bsd logo 100x100 The alpha version number 2 of PC-BSD 8.0 is now ready for testing.

Notable changes in this release:

FreeBSD 8.0-RC1
Improvements to base system
Using /usr/local LOCALBASE, allows users to easily modify their base desktop in the usual FreeBSD-ish way
Port-Console tool, provides users a way to build / run ports in a jailed environment, without fear of destroying their working desktop setup
Many bugfixes to the install / live image, fixed lots of hal/dbus issues with xorg and fixed many bugs running in LIVE mode from DVD.
NVIDIA drivers for 32bit now included (Nvidia is working on the 64bit drivers, and we’ll include those when they are released)
Misc other bugfixes, etc

Both the 32 and 64bit can be download ftp://ftp.pcbsd.org/pub/alpha-iso/

Please note, this is an ALPHA version; expect BUGS bugs and problems. We are still working on the new installer, and hope to have that impelemented in one of the next alphas.

PBIs are not yet being built for 8.0, but we are getting ready to do so, now that the release of FreeBSD 8.0 is getting closer.

If you come across any problems please drop us a note on the testing mailinglist

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ZFS on FreeBSD: ready for prime time

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Gerard

According to FreeBSD developers, Sun’s amazing file system, ZFS, is ready for production use:. Also, the FreeBSD 8.0 RC1 release notes make mention of ZFS‘ use on production servers:

And a patch set was committed by the people who handle porting ZFS to FreeBSD that they felt makes ZFS production-ready.

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FreeBSD 8.0 vs. Ubuntu 9.10 benchmarks

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Gerard

Some say comparing FreeBSD vs Linux benchmarks is unreliable and is as it were, comparing apples with pears.

For what it’s worth: the Phoronix team has done some FreeBSD 8.0 RC1 vs Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 benchmarking:

Both FreeBSD 8.0 and Ubuntu 9.10 will be included in our upcoming big operating system comparison, but for now we are just focusing upon comparing Ubuntu 9.10 and FreeBSD 8.0, but have also added in FreeBSD 7.2 for reference and to see how the performance of this BSD operating system has changed. With FreeBSD 8.0 we were using the AMD64 DVD of the first release candidate using a stock installation. With Ubuntu 9.10 we were using the x86_64 server CD of the Alpha 6 build. With FreeBSD not shipping with a desktop environment by default, we used the Ubuntu server CD so that both could be tested just from the terminal in a similar environment. All of the FreeBSD and Ubuntu options were left at their defaults. One of the package versions worth noting is that GCC 4.2.1 is used in both FreeBSD 7.2 and FreeBSD 8.0 while Ubuntu 9.10 is using GCC 4.4.1. FreeBSD was also using the default UFS file-system while Ubuntu 9.10 is running with EXT4. Each operating system was tested with its default settings (including any debug options) and packages to test an “out of the box” experience. We will be back with more benchmarks once each of these operating systems have been officially released.

and concludes that,

… more times than not, Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 came out on top compared to FreeBSD — both the 7.2 and 8.0-RC releases. Only in the 7-Zip, C-Ray, John The Ripper MD5, BYTE Unix Benchmark Dhrystone 2, and SQLite tests did FreeBSD outperform Ubuntu Linux. Between FreeBSD 7.2 and 8.0, the newer release generally did better but it had regressed with the 7-Zip, Gzip, MAFFT, and Threaded I/O Tester Read tests. That’s how the story pans out on a dual AMD Opteron quad-core workstation, but shortly we will be back around with our large operating system comparison on different hardware and with the final releases of these different operating systems to see how they compare.

Please note that 1) the inner workings of the two operating systems are different, and 2) neither of the systems are ready for release yet, so a lot of things will change and improve.

Posted in FreeBSD vs Linux, X vs Y | 2 Comments

EuroBSDCon 2009 and the preceding dev summit happened last weekendq in Cambridge, UK. Robert Watson, who has organised this successful event, noted that the FreeBSD Developer’s Summit was the largest yet in the EU with around 70 attendees. The conference was attended by about 180 attendees, and the dinner sponsored by iXsystems was sold out.

Slides, papers, and audio recordings should be available soon on the UKUUG website. Will let you know when they’re up.

Rodrigo Osorio has posted some pictures here and a couple of my eurobsdcon photos here.

View photos

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FreeBSD 9.0 feature requests

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Gerard

One of the sessions at EuroBSDCon 2009 DevSummit last week was FreeBSD 9.0 and what the devs would like to see included.

I took pictures of the whiteboard. What do you think of the request and what else would you want to see included (post your comments)?

Click image to magnify

Posted in FreeBSD | 6 Comments

FreeBSD 8.0-RC1 available

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Gerard

The first of the Release Candidates for the FreeBSD-8.0 release cycle is now available, as announced by Ken Smith.

“The first of the Release Candidates for the FreeBSD 8.0 release cycle is now available. How many RC’s we have will depend on how well 8.0-RC1 does. At the moment only one more RC is on the schedule but odds are fairly high we will wind up inserting at least one more RC. Between BETA4 and RC1 a lot of work has gone into IPv6 issues as well as many other issues that have been brought up from the public testing. And a patch set was committed by the people who handle porting ZFS to FreeBSD that they felt makes ZFS production-ready.”

There are still a few problems and outstanding issues, but hopefully they’ll get soon fixed.

FreeBSD 8.0 RC1 ISO images and a “memory stick” image for amd64/i386 architectures are available to download from the project’s mirrors. Users currently running FreeBSD 7.0 or later can upgrade via the freebsd-update utility. The final version of FreeBSD 8.0 is expected to be released in “early October”.

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FreeBSD 8.0 – BETA 4 available

Posted on September 8, 2009 by Gerard

freebsd project logo 100x100 Ken Smith has announced the fourth and last of the BETA builds for the FreeBSD-8.0 release.

The fourth and most likely final BETA build for the FreeBSD 8.0 release cycle is now available. We expect the next test build to be the first if the Release Candidates, RC1. Since BETA3 many bugs that were identified from testing done so far were addressed. Some of the bigger issues were an mbuf leak along with work done in the general IPv6, jail, and usb subsystems. Issues in other areas have been addressed as well.

Due to the issues identified in this early phase of testing the schedule for release has been pushed back. The current target for the release itself is September 29th, with two RC builds between now and then. Details about the current target schedule along with much more detail about the current status of the release is available on the FreeBSD 8.0 todo page

ISO images for Tier-1 architectures and a memory stick image for amd64/i386 are now available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites.

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VirtualBox: how to move FreeBSD to a new hard disk

Posted on September 7, 2009 by Gerard

Georges has written a post showing how to move a VirtualBox FreeBSD system to another, larger, VirtualBox drive:

“Let’s say that, like me, you once created a fixed-size virtual disk in VirtualBox, and installed FreeBSD on it. Now you’ve run out of disk space and you’d like to move your FreeBSD to a bigger-sized virtual disk. Here’s how I did it. This procedure was done with VirtualBox 2.0.{4, 6} on Windows XP.

First, with VirtualBox not running, make a backup copy of the whole .VirtualBox folder, just in case.

Start VirtualBox and select your FreeBSD virtual machine.

In Settings, Hard Disks: create a new Hard Disk, fixed-size. As the currently active HD is IDE Primary Master, the new HD will automatically be an IDE Primary Slave.When it’s done, click OK. The FreeBSD VM now has two hard disks. It’s like you’ve just added a new hard disk inside a real machine, a blank unformatted disk, which will be detected as a top-level IDE device (/dev/ad1) by the kernel.”

Go here for all the needed steps