
FreeBSD 9.1 Release Announcement - udp
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.1R/announce.html
======
stevenleeg
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>

~~~
merlincorey
That article is still fairly good of a read, with a couple things slightly out
of date, which I will note here simply for pedantry or anyone interested.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
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.

~~~
zanny
I run btrfs on my main arch installation. Have for ~6 months. If you get the
fsck.btrfs tool (it is upstream) you eliminiate the only real showstopper with
btrfs on Linux.

You get the online compression (meaning you use less space _and_ read and
write faster on mechanical storage because you have less to read / write at a
time), you get the snapshots, you get subvolumes, checksums, etc.

~~~
rauar
I follow the btrfs development because I'd love to have at least the features
of ZFS on Linux. However I would not dare (yet) to use it as a replacement for
my current home fileserver (which owns ALL my data).

Does btrfs provide cifs export like ZFS ?

Edit:

from the btrfs wiki
[https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Is_btrfs_stable....](https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Is_btrfs_stable.3F)
:

Is btrfs stable? Short answer: No, it's still considered experimental.

------
hosay123
For anyone interested in high throughput/low latency networking, 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
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
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/> which is Van Jacobsen's earlier
work on a system of comparable design. Another (insanely more complex)
implementation is <http://www.openonload.org/>

~~~
justincormack
Ah thanks for that, hadn't realised that was a use case too, only started
looking at this stuff the other day...

------
antonios
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>

~~~
antonios
More user-friendly page: <http://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10>

~~~
kps
It will be interesting to see whether variable symlinks can bring some
Plan9ish filesystem elegance to *nix.

------
protomyth
"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."

------
4ad
I'm very happy to see the new ZFS enhancements imported from illumos, but I am
very sad to see nothing about DTrace.

------
Luyt
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
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>

------
checker659
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?

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

~~~
msbarnett
Tilaa (<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>), which seems to have
a good reputation, and RootBSD (<https://www.rootbsd.net>), which seems
expensive for what you get. I haven't personally tried either.

~~~
pestaa
Tilaa looks excellent! Thanks for the pointer. Can you please describe your
experience with them in some detail?

~~~
msbarnett
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.

------
rauar
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
v28 - the last version released under the CDDL. You should be fine.

~~~
rauar
Moved on to ZFS on Linux. FreeBSD does not support sharesmb.

~~~
Freaky
Something wrong with Samba?

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rbanffy
I really would like not having to choose between Gnome Shell and ZFS. :-(

How is device (ethernet, wireless, Intel GPU) support on laptops?

~~~
emaste
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.

~~~
cturner
Thanks, how about suspend/resume?

~~~
emaste
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-Dece...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
current/2012-December/038530.html) <http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-
pr.cgi?pr=kern/174504>

------
Nux
No kvm virtio drivers?

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

