Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Mark Linimon wrote: From a ports standpoint: absolutely not. We are currently trying to support 4 major CVS branches. Although we still have some dedicated committers who are trying to keep the Ports Collection running on 4.X, they are falling further and further behind, especially as the rate of new ports being added continues to accelerate. The network infrastructure servers (DNS servers, routers, firewalls) is traditional role of BSD UNIXes. FreeBSD 4.11 is very well tested and has good performance. Those servers need not new ports so much nor new version of installed aplications - unless a security problem revealed. Even if no new ports will be compilable on 4.x, even if the old ports will not be updated with exception of update caused by security bug, I vote for delaying EOL of 4.11 Dan BTW, if you encounter problem with port on 4.x, the "tips for dummies" are: 1. update perl from ports 2. install openssl from ports 3. install and use gcc 3.4 for compiling Many of problematic ports become compilable again. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Garance A Drosihn napsal/wrote, On 10/11/06 21:33: Even if no new ports will be compilable on 4.x, even if the old ports will not be updated with exception of update caused by security bug, I vote for delaying EOL of 4.11 That's easy to say. I understand that it's much more work than just "you are on your own - EOL arrived". As I'm not commiter, I'm allowed to submit PR and speak. I'm trying both. This letter is "speak" part. You can't just keep voting to say "support me forever", and have it cost nothing. Someone, somewhere, has to put up the time and effort to actually do that support. And realistically, that someone has to be the people who are actively running 4.x. Me, I have no desire to run 4.x. I have become too accustomed to a variety of nice features which are in 6.x. I'm also in the process of replacing two of my PC's (because they are having hardware trouble), and once I do that I only have one PC which will even bootup in 4.x -- and that is a 10-year-old PC which I hope to replace before the end of the year. I never call for "support forever". In advance, I didn't accept other's "I has old hardware, unsupported by 6.x' as strong argument for delaying of EOL. It's about money only and if you run important production server, you should be able to obtain money for it's upgrade. Problem is performance and trust in stability. It's money and hardware independent problem. 5.x has significant performance hit, so we can't count it as competitive replacement for 4.x. 6.1 is second release in 6.x tree. 6.0 has stability problem. The 6.1 is sufficiently stable on average use, but it still has problems in edge situations. The 6.2 become first RELEASE in 6.x tree acceptable for serious production use. 6.3 will be candidate for first trustable RELEASE if there will not be significant problem with 6.2. It's nothing special on major version changes - 3.0 has been buggy, 4.0 has been buggy, 5.0 has been almost unusable. It's common for other systems also - first usable release of Novell Netware in 3.x tree has been 3.11 (after buggy 3.0 and 3.1), but stable release has been 3.12 for example. At this time, there are about 224 unclosed PRs related to kern/6.x tree older than three month, 192 of them are untouched (eg. in plain open state). Nobody knows they are reporting serious problem or they are reports of nonexistent problems and they are a sort bug of submitter or hardware or so. IMHO, commiters are hard working on implementing new features, but has no spare time to polish and repair older parts of code. So, at the time of EOL of well tested, fast and stable version we have the only so-so trustable release as replacement. Despite of a money spent to modern hardware. It's just not so good news. Nothing more. I understand that FreeBSD is volunteer based project so nobody can push a commiter to prefer polishing previously implemented features against implementing new toys. Nobody can force release team to postpone next RELEASE until previously reported problems are analysed and resolved or denied (at least most of them). I respect you are upgrading to 6.x because of nice features which you need. But I need none of it on most of our infrastructure server (including those routing to network with more than thousand computer). In the fact, I'm using IPFW2 only and it's available on 4.11 as well, so no reason for 6.x for routers, firewals DNS servers. I prefer performance and stability over new features (it's main reason we selected FreeBSD instead of Linux as main platform for our networks ten years ago). Well. I'm hesitate that my doubt about stability and performance of current and next 6.x release will not make so much friends for me there. So, no more words with exception of "thank you" for all volunteers. I'm sure they do the best they can. If I can say my humble opinion with no further explanation - the optimal EOL for 4.11 I see about three months after 6.4-RELEASE. Three months after 6.3-RELEASE is worse but still acceptable. It's my $0.02 Dan P.S. Please note the english isn't my native language. -- Dan Lukes SISAL MFF UK AKA: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Garance A Drosihn napsal/wrote, On 10/12/06 04:09: Your 4.x system is not doing to die when we EOL 4.x. We're only This is an open-source project. If it really is as easy to support 4.x with security fixes as you think it is, then "you" (all of you Yes, I'm ready to self-support the 4.x for me. In the fact, the problem is not in system, the problem is in ports, but I used few ports only, so it's acceptable. But, maybe for my poor knowledge of english, you misunderstand the point of my think. The main problem is - 6.x is still not competitive replacement for 4.x. I'm NOT speaking about old unsupported hardware - I speaked about performance in some situation and believe in it's stability. It has been serie of decisions of commiters and release team that create current situation and all I say is, the resulting situation is not good because we must drop product when worse replacement available only. who depend on a 4.x system) should be able to do that work without help from "us" (the people running AMD64, ARM, PowerPC, Sparc64, or even just recent i386 hardware which is not supported by 4.x). I fully understand it. But' I'm not sure if there is sufficient amount of users of those new platform in the community. I sayd the commiters prefer to work on new toys over maintaining the previous code (including it's own). I understant the working on new toys is more interesting work than debugging code with not so exact PR in hand only. Despite of it, I respect the sovereighty of an commiter to decide what he want to work on. May be - the project need to adopt commiters of another sort - those who are ready to review old code, repairing bug and polishing. Well - it's off-topic here. I sayd the current situation (which has no good solution) is result of recent decision. I don't want to sound unsympathetic here, because up until just six months ago I was also depending on security fixes for 4.x. But after having two of my personal PC's fried (due to a broken air-conditioner), I have now moved on. I'm also preparing to transition, but it's first time I'm changing better version and thinking I'm upgrading to worse system than previous Despite of anything I sayd, we should thank for the whole team for it's work. I'm sure anybody do all he can. Dan -- Dan Lukes SISAL MFF UK AKA: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Doug Barton wrote: The main problem is - 6.x is still not competitive replacement for 4.x. I'm NOT speaking about old unsupported hardware - I speaked about performance in some situation and believe in it's stability. I think saying that it's a worse replacement is a bit too broad. With no doubt. You are partially correct when you say that the developer community is only interested in more recent issues. It's based on number of PR's I has opened/unanalyzed. My PR's are mostly focused on not so critical problem in ancients part of code. I know standard mantra, of course - no volunteer must analyze my (or anybody's) PRs, there is no doubt about it ... Therefore, if 6.x is not working for you, for whatever reason, it's time to get in the game. I'm already in ;-) I'm using 6-STABLE (and 5-STABLE previously) on some unimportant computers and I'm reposting observered problems (mostly with offer of patch). I'm hesitating to install 6.x tree releases on critical routers mainly as they are on the performance top already (with modern hardware, not an old crap) ... Well, nothing more to speak. Have a nice day. Dan ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Performance 4.x vs. 6.x (was: e: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon)
Danial Thom wrote: The right thing to do is to port the SATA support and new NIC support back to 4.x and support both. 4.x is far superior on a Uniprocessor system and FreeBSD-5+ may be an entire re-write away from ever being any good at MP. Come to terms with it, PLEASE, because it is the case and saying otherwise won't change it. Despite I'm initiator of this way of discussion (in security list), I can't agree with you. No way. You are not allowed to tell to someone working as volunteer several months on something that the best way is rollback all work and start from scratch. Despite of your complaints are competent or not. You totally miss the right time for this type of complain. It's too late now. 6.x is not crap in any way. It has some problem, even after many months of development, but it can be resolved if volunteers decide to use it's power to polish previously implemented code. Current 6.x is better in many parameters than 4.x. Well, some important parameters are worse, but correct decision is improve them, not rollback all work. I voted against premature EOLing of 4.x, but returning to FreeBSD 4.x is not acceptable way in any way - at least because it's the DragonBSD's nest now. Dan ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon
Doug Barton napsal/wrote, On 10/12/06 21:06:
The odds are pretty close to 100% that things will run better with 6.x
than with 5.x. Many fixes that have been MFC'ed to 6.x have not and will
not be ported to 5.x.
It's better to explicitly ask for MFC to selected branches when
submitting PR. MFC is not automatic even for RELENG_6 branch ...
You should know that best supported branch of FreeBSD is HEAD ... ;-)
Dan
--
Dan Lukes SISAL MFF UK
AKA: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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