

FreeBSD 10.2 - forkandwait
https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.2R/relnotes.html

======
gergles
What about this change from 'latest' to 'quarterly' with no good way to change
that for pkg? I don't want to only get new packages 4 times a year. Is that
what's going to happen?

It also feels like the documentation around doing things like pinning you
could do in apt is lacking; if there are some packages I can say "retrieve
these packages from latest" then I'd be more okay with everything else only
updating 4x a year.

~~~
jarcane
FreeBSD's packages being so up to date is literally one of the reasons I
switched to it from Debian.

I don't understand this change, nor why it's the default. Actually having up-
to-date packages was one of BSD's biggest selling points. Sick of distros with
package systems so out-of-date they might as well not exist.

~~~
untothebreach
Some organizations value stability over new features, which is why you see so
many places using distros like debian stable, centos, etc. It may not fit your
needs, but there are plenty of use cases for preferring stability and security
over new features.

~~~
jarcane
There are advantages, yes, not denying that, but it seems vanishingly rare to
find a packaging system that doesn't have this problem, and that's frustrating
in particular for a programmer when almost every single language you use
doesn't have an up-to-date package and winds up requiring an external install
that then isn't even necessarily version tracked.

And I do wonder at the security implications of that. Some of the more popular
languages like Python get semi-regular security updates even on stable
branches like Debian's, but then I see stuff like Racket still being on 5.2
which came out in 2011 and I have to wonder how that affects the security
profile if some "stable" package you've installed is depending on a scripting
language package that still has a vulnerability in it because the package in
"stable" hasn't been updated in half a decade.

~~~
TsiCClawOfLight
have you tried arch? sounds like you would like it :)

------
asymmetric
I'll state the obvious, but coming from Linux it's impressive and at the same
time weird to look at a full OS's changelog.

~~~
mapleoin
You'll have to explain. Linux distros have release notes, too:
[http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
US/Fedora/22/html/Release_N...](http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
US/Fedora/22/html/Release_Notes/)
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VividVervet/ReleaseNotes](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VividVervet/ReleaseNotes)

or if you really meant Linux:
[http://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges](http://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges)

------
zxcvcxz
Is there an easy way to install a FreeBSD container on a Linux system?

For example, I can do

    
    
        # debootstrap --arch=amd64 unstable ~/debian-tree/
        # systemd-nspawn -D ~/debian-tree/
    

And be in a debian container. Is there a simple way to get a FreeBSD
container?

~~~
cperciva
No, because Linux containers are still running the Linux kernel, and the Linux
kernel doesn't know how to run FreeBSD binaries.

You can do the opposite however -- running Linux inside jails on FreeBSD
hosts. This is how docker-on-freebsd works, and also how FreeBSD desktop
systems usually cope with software like Flash plugins which are only available
as Linux binaries.

~~~
bmir-alum-007
Btw, thanks for FreeBSD compat work _for running_ on AWS/Xen, even if it
might've been mostly to host Tarsnap on it. ;)

It's possible to run a NetBSD Xen dom0 (host system) on bare metal, under
VMware or Xen HVM: it takes a few patches, building a kernel and config tweaks
to get going but it works stably. [0] (There's no XAPI (the Xen remote
management API) support however, so XenServer tools and other 3rd-party XAPI
integrations probably won't work. FYI: XAPI server-side is coded in OCaml;
don't ask how I know that. ;) [1])

For most people w/ baremetal or rented colo that just want a turn-key
supportable hypervisor, I would advise using Citrix XenServer (commercial
official Xen, free download, it seems be more stable than XCP and includes
XAPI) or VMware ESXi (free download, very stable, $$$ quickly). After that,
you can run whatever OS/es you like. (IIRC a ton of AWS boxes run heavily-
modified Xen open-source 3.3.x.)

For desktop/laptop dev: VirtualBox, VMware Fusion/Workstation or qemu.

References:

0\.
[https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/xen/howto/](https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/xen/howto/)

1\. [https://github.com/xapi-project/xen-api](https://github.com/xapi-
project/xen-api)

EDIT: pronouns

~~~
cperciva
_FreeBSD compat work on AWS /Xen_

I did no such thing. My work was all to add _AWS /Xen_ compatibility to
_FreeBSD_. :-)

In all serious though, while wanting to host Tarsnap on an OS I knew and
trusted was my justification for spending so much time on FreeBSD/EC2, my
actual _reason_ had more to do with wanting to make sure that FreeBSD didn't
fall behind.

~~~
bmir-alum-007
Ah cool. Adoption is like a stochastic transfer function with a dependent
variable "modern usability."

Speaking of usability, here's a patch to libfetch to ignore crusty ftp server
non-RFC spurious responses
[https://gist.github.com/steakknife/b4772a5deb6afc8851e0](https://gist.github.com/steakknife/b4772a5deb6afc8851e0)
(I have absolute zero idea how to contribute code/patches to FreeBSD or it's
not obvious/easy from docs.)

s/on/for/ That's what I meant. ;)

------
bleomycin
Does anyone know how the virtio network performance is on this release when
virtualized under qemu/kvm? I know that pfsense is moving to 10.2 soon and
i've been unable to use it virtualized due to its atrocious virtio net
performance.

While the linux based firewall alternatives are incredibly fast they just
don't have anywhere near the ease of use/feature set of pfsense!

~~~
napkindrawing
I had that same problem when I was proofing out FreeBSD to replace Linux at
$work but found an errata that fixed everything by disabling hardware checksum
offloading:

    
    
        ifconfig xn0 -tso4

------
msbarnett
Downloading the VM image to a new Linode right now!

edit: that was fast

$ uname -a FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE #0 r286666: Wed Aug 12
15:26:37 UTC 2015 root@releng1.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
amd64

------
bmir-alum-007
Running this on our AWS sandbox ec2 instance after snapshotting it:

    
    
            freebsd-update fetch install && freebsd-update -r 10.2-RELEASE upgrade
    
    

EDIT: Updates to 10.1-RELASE-p17 (currently) before upgrading

~~~
cperciva
Quick reminder (not that you necessarily need it, but lots of people do forget
this): It's usually a good idea to run

    
    
        freebsd-update fetch
    

and install any updates (rebooting if necessary) before you try to upgrade to
a new release. On occasion there have been problems in freebsd-update which
need to be fixed.

EDIT: Don't run 'freebsd-update fetch install && freebsd-update ... upgrade',
since if the first command installs kernel updates you might need to reboot
before downloading upgrades. (Ok, it's very unlikely. But it's _theoretically_
possible that a kernel update would affect the upgrade-downloading process.)

~~~
bmir-alum-007
Ah thanks. It happens this box was updated from 10.1 -p16 to -p17 recently.
Generally, on most OSes/apps, smaller upgrade deltas = less breakage.

Afterwards, folks may want to rebuild _outdated_ ports to avoid stale shared
libs from the previous release using something like:

    
    
        (cd /usr/ports && make update && portmaster -a)
        # or: -aBg saves new packages for re/installation on other boxes
    
    

Finally, check ports for any unpatched security issues (should be 0):

    
    
         pkg audit -F
    
    

EDIT: only rebuild _outdated_ ports

~~~
feld
Only for some kernel modules because a few occasionally have an issue but
generally they're not supposed to.

Otherwise FreeBSD is backwards compatible. You can run FreeBSD 2.0 binaries
and libraries just fine if you want. There's some on the official FreeBSD
cluster, I think.

In case you didn't know, the official FreeBSD packages for 10.1 and 10.2 will
continue to be built on 10.1 -- the oldest supported release in the 10.x
train.

~~~
bmir-alum-007
Sounds like userland is mostly perpetually backward-compatible. If so, that
would be awesomesauce.

~~~
Sanddancer
Pretty close. Compatibility back to FreeBSD 4 is a port package away, and
there's a kernel module to support a.out binaries if you really need to run
those 20+ year old programs. Some of the older syscalls don't have 32 bit
wrappers, though, so you may not get full support for absolutely positively
everything without emulation, but pretty damn close.

------
olavgg
FreeBSD 10.2 do come with some ZFS fixes which could occur under high load.

------
protomyth
Did the upgrade, and it seemed to go ok, but now the pw command is really slow
(around 1 minute to complete). This might be a bit of fun figuring out.

