&os;/&arch; &release.current; Release NotesThe FreeBSD Project$FreeBSD$2000200120022003The FreeBSD Documentation ProjectThe release notes for &os; &release.current; contain a summary
of
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.IntroductionThis 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;.
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 .
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This distribution of &os; &release.current; is a
&release.type; distribution. It can be found at or any of its mirrors. More
information on obtaining this (or other) &release.type;
distributions of &os; can be found in the Obtaining
FreeBSD appendix to the FreeBSD
Handbook.
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Users who are new to the &release.branch; series of &os;
&release.type;s should also read the Early Adopters Guide
to &os; &release.current;. 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.All users are encouraged to consult the release errata before
installing &os;. The errata document is updated with
late-breaking 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.What's NewThis section describes
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.Security AdvisoriesKernel ChangesPlatform-Specific Hardware SupportPCI interrupts are always routed on i386 UP
machines, which may improve the usability of some PCI devices
(particularly on laptops).Boot Loader ChangesNetwork Interface SupportNetwork ProtocolsTo reduce information leakage, IPv4 packets no longer have
a ip_id field set unless fragmentation is
being done.Disks and StorageVarious &man.geom.4; modules can now be loaded as kernel
modules, namely:
geom_apple,
geom_bde,
geom_bsd,
geom_gpt,
geom_mbr,
geom_pc98,
geom_sunlabel,
geom_vol_ffs.
File SystemsMultimedia SupportUserland Changes&man.chroot.8; now allows the optional setting of a user,
primary group, or group list to use inside the chroot
environment via the , ,
and options respectively.The libcipher DES cryptography library
has been removed. All of its functionality is provided by the
libcrypto library, and all base systems
programs that used libcipher have been
converted to use libcrypto instead.The libthr 1:1
threading library is now built by default.The &man.pam.guest.8; PAM module has been added to allow
guest logins. It replaces the pam_ftp(8) module.Contributed SoftwareOpenPAM has been updated to the
Digitalis release.Ports/Packages Collection InfrastructureRelease Engineering and IntegrationDocumentationUpgrading from previous releases of &os;Users with existing &os; systems are
highly encouraged to read the Early
Adopter's Guide to &os; &release.current;. This document generally has
the filename EARLY.TXT 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.X versus running &os;
4.X.Upgrading &os; should, of course, only be attempted after
backing up all data and configuration
files.