freebsd-dev/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/relnotes/article.sgml

<articleinfo>
  <title>&os;/&arch; &release.current; Release Notes</title>

  <corpauthor>The FreeBSD Project</corpauthor>

  <pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>

  <copyright>
    <year>2000</year>
    <year>2001</year>
    <year>2002</year>
    <year>2003</year>
    <holder role="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org">The FreeBSD Documentation Project</holder>
  </copyright>

  <abstract>
    <para>The release notes for &os; &release.current; contain a summary
      of
<![ %include.historic; [
      the changes made to the &os; base system since &release.prev;.
]]>
<![ %no.include.historic; [
      recent changes made to the &os; base system on the &release.branch;
      development branch.
]]>
      This document lists applicable security advisories that were issued since
      the last release, as well as significant changes to the &os;
      kernel and userland.
      Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented.</para>
  </abstract>
</articleinfo>

<sect1 id="intro">
  <title>Introduction</title>

  <para>This document contains the release notes for &os;
    &release.current; on the &arch.print; hardware platform.  It
    describes recently added, changed, or deleted features of &os;.
    It also provides some notes on upgrading
    from previous versions of &os;.</para>

<![ %release.type.snapshot [

  <para>The &release.type; distribution to which these release notes
    apply represents a point along the &release.branch; development
    branch between &release.prev; and the future &release.next;.  Some
    pre-built, binary &release.type; distributions along this branch
    can be found at <ulink url="&release.url;"></ulink>.</para>

]]>

<![ %release.type.release [

  <para>This distribution of &os; &release.current; is a
    &release.type; distribution.  It can be found at <ulink
    url="&release.url;"></ulink> or any of its mirrors.  More
    information on obtaining this (or other) &release.type;
    distributions of &os; can be found in the <ulink
    url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors.html"><quote>Obtaining
    FreeBSD</quote> appendix</ulink> to the <ulink
    url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/">FreeBSD
    Handbook</ulink>.</para>

]]>

  <para>Users who are new to the &release.branch; series of &os;
    &release.type;s should also read the <quote>Early Adopters Guide
    to &os; &release.current;</quote>.  This document can generally be
    found in the same location as the release notes (either as a part of a
    &os; distribution or on the &os; Web site).  It contains important
    information regarding the advantages and disadvantages of using
    &os; &release.current;, as opposed to releases based on the &os;
    4-STABLE development branch.</para>

  <para>All users are encouraged to consult the release errata before
    installing &os;.  The errata document is updated with
    <quote>late-breaking</quote> information discovered late in the
    release cycle or after the release.  Typically, it contains
    information on known bugs, security advisories, and corrections to
    documentation.  An up-to-date copy of the errata for &os;
    &release.current; can be found on the &os; Web site.</para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="new">
  <title>What's New</title>

  <para>This section describes
<![ %include.historic; [
      the most user-visible new or changed features in &os;
      since &release.prev;.
      In general, changes described here are unique to the &release.branch;
      branch unless specifically marked as &merged; features.
]]>
<![ %no.include.historic; [
      many of the user-visible new or changed features in &os;
      since &release.prev;.  It includes items that are unique to the
      &release.branch; branch, as well as some features that may have been
      recently merged to
      other branches (after &os; &release.prev.historic;).  The latter
      items are marked as &merged;.
]]>
  </para>

  <para>Typical release note items
    document recent security advisories issued after
    &release.prev.historic;,
    new drivers or hardware support, new commands or options,
    major bug fixes, or contributed software upgrades.  They may also
    list changes to major ports/packages or release engineering
    practices.  Clearly the release notes cannot list every single
    change made to &os; between releases; this document focuses
    primarily on security advisories, user-visible changes, and major
    architectural improvements.</para>

  <sect2 id="security">
    <title>Security Advisories</title>

    <para></para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="kernel">
    <title>Kernel Changes</title>

    <para>A kernel software watchdog facility has been implemented.
      For more information, see &man.watchdog.4; and
      &man.watchdogd.8;.</para>

    <!-- Above this line, sort kernel changes by manpage/keyword-->

    <sect3 id="proc">
      <title>Platform-Specific Hardware Support</title>

      <para arch="i386">PCI interrupts are always routed on i386 UP
	machines, which may improve the usability of some PCI devices
	(particularly on laptops).</para>

      <para arch="i386">An integer overflow that could cause kernel
        panics on PAE machines of certain large memory sizes has been
        corrected.</para>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="boot">
      <title>Boot Loader Changes</title>

      <para></para>

      <!-- Above this line, order boot loader changes by keyword-->

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="net-if">
      <title>Network Interface Support</title>

      <para>The new &man.ath.4; and &man.ath.hal.4; drivers provide
	support for 802.11a/b/g devices based on the AR5210, AR5211,
	and AR5212 chips.</para>

      <para>A bug in the &man.bge.4; driver that prevented it from
	working correctly at 10 Mbps has been fixed.</para>

      <para>The 802.11 support layer has been rewritten to allow for
	future growth and new features.</para>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="net-proto">
      <title>Network Protocols</title>

      <para>To reduce information leakage, IPv4 packets no longer have
	a <varname>ip_id</varname> field set unless fragmentation is
	being done.</para>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="disks">
      <title>Disks and Storage</title>

      <para>Various &man.geom.4; modules can now be loaded as kernel
	modules, namely:
	<filename>geom_apple</filename>,
	<filename>geom_bde</filename>,
	<filename>geom_bsd</filename>,
	<filename>geom_gpt</filename>,
	<filename>geom_mbr</filename>,
	<filename>geom_pc98</filename>,
	<filename>geom_sunlabel</filename>,
	<filename>geom_vol_ffs</filename>.
	</para>

      <para>A <literal>GEOM_FOX</literal> module has been added to
	detect and select between multiple redundant paths to the same
	device.</para>

      <para arch="i386">The &man.matcd.4; driver, which supports the
        Matsushita CR-562 and CR-563 CD drives, has returned.</para>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="fs">
      <title>File Systems</title>

      <para></para>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="mm">
      <title>Multimedia Support</title>

      <para></para>

    </sect3>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="userland">
    <title>Userland Changes</title>

    <para>&man.chroot.8; now allows the optional setting of a user,
      primary group, or group list to use inside the chroot
      environment via the <option>-u</option>, <option>-g</option>,
      and <option>-G</option> options respectively.</para>

    <para>The dev_db utility is unnecessary due to the mandatory
      presence of devfs, and has been removed.</para>

    <para>The <filename>libcipher</filename> DES cryptography library
      has been removed.  All of its functionality is provided by the
      <filename>libcrypto</filename> library, and all base systems
      programs that used <filename>libcipher</filename> have been
      converted to use <filename>libcrypto</filename> instead.</para>

    <para arch="i386,ia64">The <filename>libthr</filename> 1:1
      threading library is now built by default.</para>

    <para>The &man.locale.1; utility has been re-implemented and is
      now POSIX-compliant.</para>

    <para>The &man.pam.guest.8; PAM module has been added to allow
      guest logins.  It replaces the pam_ftp(8) module.</para>

    <para>&man.ps.1; now supports a <option>-H</option> to display all
      kernel-visible threads in each process.</para>
  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="contrib">
    <title>Contributed Software</title>

    <para><application>BIND</application> has been updated from 8.3.4
      to 8.3.6.</para>

    <para><application>lukemftp</application> has been updated from
      1.6beta2 to a 15 June 2003 snapshot from NetBSD.</para>

    <para><application>OpenPAM</application> has been updated from the
      <quote>Dianthus</quote> release to the
      <quote>Digitalis</quote> release.</para>

    <para><application>texinfo</application> has been updated from 4.5
      to 4.6. &merged;</para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="ports">
    <title>Ports/Packages Collection Infrastructure</title>

    <para></para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="releng">
    <title>Release Engineering and Integration</title>

    <para></para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="doc">
    <title>Documentation</title>

    <para></para>

  </sect2>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="upgrade">
  <title>Upgrading from previous releases of &os;</title>

  <para>Users with existing &os; systems are
    <emphasis>highly</emphasis> encouraged to read the <quote>Early
    Adopter's Guide to &os; &release.current;</quote>.  This document generally has
    the filename <filename>EARLY.TXT</filename> on the distribution
    media, or any other place that the release notes can be found.  It
    offers some notes on upgrading, but more importantly, also
    discusses some of the relative merits of upgrading to &os;
    5.<replaceable>X</replaceable> versus running &os;
    4.<replaceable>X</replaceable>.</para>

  <important>
    <para>Upgrading &os; should, of course, only be attempted after
      backing up <emphasis>all</emphasis> data and configuration
      files.</para>
  </important>
</sect1>