545 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
545 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//DTD DocBook V4.1-Based Extension//EN" [
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<!ENTITY % articles.ent PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES DocBook FreeBSD Articles Entity Set//EN">
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%articles.ent;
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<!ENTITY % release PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES Release Specification//EN">
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%release;
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<!ENTITY release.4x "4.<replaceable>X</replaceable>">
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<!ENTITY release.5x "5.<replaceable>X</replaceable>">
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<!ENTITY release.4last "4.10-RELEASE">
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<!ENTITY release.5branchpoint "5.3-RELEASE">
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]>
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<article>
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<articleinfo>
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<title>Early Adopter's Guide to &os; &release.current;</title>
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<authorgroup>
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<corpauthor>The &os; Release Engineering Team</corpauthor>
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</authorgroup>
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<pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>
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<copyright>
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<year>2002</year>
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<year>2003</year>
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<year>2004</year>
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<holder role="mailto:re@FreeBSD.org">The &os; Release
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Engineering Team</holder>
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</copyright>
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<legalnotice id="trademarks" role="trademarks">
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&tm-attrib.freebsd;
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&tm-attrib.intel;
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&tm-attrib.microsoft;
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&tm-attrib.sparc;
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&tm-attrib.general;
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</legalnotice>
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<abstract>
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<para>This article describes the status of &os;
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&release.current;, from the standpoint of users who may be new
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to the &release.5x; series of releases or to &os; in general.
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It presents some background information on release
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engineering, some highlights of new features, and some
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possible drawbacks that might be faced by early adopters. It
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also contains some of the future release engineering plans for
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the 4-STABLE development branch and some tips on upgrading
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existing systems.</para>
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</abstract>
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</articleinfo>
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<sect1 id="intro">
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<title>Introduction</title>
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<para>&os; &release.5x; marks the first new major version of &os; in
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over two years. Besides a number of new features, it also
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contains a number of major developments in the underlying system
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architecture.
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Along with these advances, however, comes a system that
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incorporates a tremendous amount of new and not-widely-tested
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code. Compared to the existing line of
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&release.4x; releases, the first few &release.5x; releases
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may have regressions
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in areas of stability, performance, and occasionally
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functionality.</para>
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<para>For these reasons, the &a.re; specifically
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discourages users from updating from older &os; releases to
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&release.current; unless they are aware of (and prepared to deal
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with) possible regressions in the newer releases.
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Specifically, for more conservative users, we recommend
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running &release.4x; releases (such as
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&release.4last;) for the near-term
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future. We feel that such users are probably best served by
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upgrading to &release.5x; only after a
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5-STABLE development branch has been created; this may be around
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the time of &release.5branchpoint;.</para>
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<para>(&os; &release.5x; suffers from what has been described as a
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<quote>chicken and egg</quote> problem. The entire project has
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a goal of producing releases that are as stable and reliable
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as possible. This stability and reliability requires widespread
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testing, particularly of the system's newer features. However,
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getting a large number of users to test the system, in a
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practical sense, means building and distributing a
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release first!)</para>
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<para>This article describes some of the issues involved in
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installing and running &os; &release.current;. We begin with a
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brief overview of the &os; release process. We then present
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some of the more noteworthy new features in &os; &release.current;, along
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with some areas that may prove troublesome for unwary users.
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For those users choosing to remain with 4-STABLE-based releases,
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we give some of the short- to medium-term plans for this
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development branch. Finally, we present some notes on upgrading
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existing &release.4x; systems to &release.current;.</para>
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</sect1>
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<sect1 id="release-overview">
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<title>An Overview of the &os; Release Process</title>
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<para>&os; employs a model of development that relies on multiple
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development branches within the source code repository. The main branch is called
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<quote>CURRENT</quote>, and is referred to in the CVS repository
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with the <literal>HEAD</literal> tag. New features are
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committed first to this branch; although this means that CURRENT
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is the first to see new functionality, it also means that it
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occasionally suffers from breakages as new features are
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added and debugged.</para>
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<para>Most &os; releases are made from one of several
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<quote>STABLE</quote> branches. Features are only added to
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these branches after some amount of testing in CURRENT. At the
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moment, only one STABLE branch is under active development; this
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branch is referred to as <quote>4-STABLE</quote>, and all of the
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&os; &release.4x; releases were based on
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it. This branch has the tag <literal>RELENG_4</literal> in the
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CVS repository.</para>
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<para>&os; 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2 are based on the CURRENT branch. The
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first of these releases was made after over two years of development
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(prior to these, the
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last release from HEAD was &os; 4.0, in March 2000).</para>
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<para>At some point after the release of &os; 5.0, a
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<quote>5-STABLE</quote> branch will be created in the &os;
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CVS repository with the branch tag <literal>RELENG_5</literal>.
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The past two stable branches (3-STABLE and 4-STABLE) were
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created immediately after their respective <quote>dot-oh</quote>
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releases (3.0 and 4.0, respectively). In hindsight, this
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practice did not give sufficient time for either CURRENT
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to stabilize before the new branches were
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created. This in turn resulted in wasted effort porting bug
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fixes between branches, as well as some architectural changes
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that could not be ported between branches at all.</para>
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<para>Therefore, the release engineering team will only create the
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5-STABLE branch in the CVS repository after we have found a
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relatively stable state to use as its basis. It is likely that
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there will be
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multiple releases in the &release.5x; series
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before this happens; we estimate
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that the 5-STABLE branch will be created around the time of
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&release.5branchpoint;.</para>
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<para>More information on &os; release engineering processes can be found
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on the <ulink
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url="&url.base;/releng/index.html">Release
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Engineering Web pages</ulink> and in the <ulink
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url="&url.articles.releng;/index.html"><quote>&os; Release
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Engineering</quote></ulink> article. Specific issues for the upcoming
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5-STABLE development branch can be found in <ulink
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url="&url.articles.5-roadmap;/index.html"><quote>The
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Roadmap for 5-STABLE</quote></ulink>.</para>
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</sect1>
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<sect1 id="new">
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<title>New Features</title>
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<para>A large attraction of &os; &release.5x; is a number of new
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features. These new features and functionality generally involve
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large architectural changes that were not feasible to port back to
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the &os; 4-STABLE development branch. (By contrast, many
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self-contained enhancements, such as new device drivers or
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userland utilities, have already been ported.) A brief, but not
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exhaustive list includes:</para>
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>SMPng: The <quote>next generation</quote> support for
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SMP machines (work in progress).
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Ongoing work aims to perform fine-grained locking of various
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kernel subsystems to increase the number of threads of
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execution that can be running in the kernel. More
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information can be found on the
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<ulink url="&url.base;/smp/index.html">FreeBSD SMP
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Project</ulink> page.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>KSE: Kernel Scheduled Entities allow a single process
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to have multiple kernel-level threads, similar to Scheduler
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Activations. The <filename>libkse</filename>
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and <filename>libthr</filename> threading libraries make this
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feature available to multi-threaded userland programs,
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using the &man.pthread.3; API.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>New architectures: Support for the sparc64, ia64, and amd64
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architectures, in addition to the i386, pc98, and
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alpha.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>GCC: The compiler toolchain is now based on GCC
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3.3.<replaceable>X</replaceable>, rather than GCC
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2.95.<replaceable>X</replaceable>.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>MAC: Support for extensible, loadable Mandatory Access
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Control policies.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>GEOM: A flexible framework for transformations of disk
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I/O requests. The GBDE experimental disk encryption facility has
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been developed based on GEOM.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>FFS: The FFS filesystem now supports background
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&man.fsck.8; operations (for faster crash recovery) and
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filesystem snapshots.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>UFS2: A new UFS2 on-disk format has been added, which
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supports extended per-file attributes and larger file
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sizes. UFS2 is now the default format for &man.newfs.8;.
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On all platforms except for pc98, filesystems created from
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within &man.sysinstall.8; will use UFS2 by default.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Cardbus: Support for Cardbus devices.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Bluetooth: Support for Bluetooth devices.</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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<para>A more comprehensive list of new features can be found in
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the release notes for the various &os; &release.5x; releases.</para>
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</sect1>
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<sect1 id="drawbacks">
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<title>Drawbacks to Early Adoption</title>
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<para>Along with the new features of &os; &release.5x; come some areas
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that can cause problems, or at least can lead to unexpected
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behavior. Generally, these come from the fact that a number of
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features are works-in-progress. A partial list of these
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areas of difficulty includes:</para>
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>A number of features are not yet finished. Examples
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from the feature list above include SMPng and KSE. While
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suitable for testing and experimentation, these features may
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not be ready for production use.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Because of changes in kernel data structures and
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ABIs/APIs, third-party binary device drivers will require
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modifications to work correctly under &os; 5.0. There is
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a possibility of more minor ABI/API changes before the
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5-STABLE branch is created, particularly on newer machine
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architectures. In some (hopefully rare) cases,
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user-visible structures may change, requiring recompiling of
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applications or reinstallation of ports/packages.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Several parts of &os;'s base system functionality
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have been moved to the Ports Collection. Notable examples
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include <application>Perl</application>,
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<application>UUCP</application>, and most (but not all)
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games. While these programs are still supported, their
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removal from the base system may cause some confusion.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Some parts of the &os; base system have fallen into a
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state of disrepair due to a lack of users and maintainers.
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These have been removed. Specific examples include the
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generation of a.out-style executables, XNS networking
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support, and the X-10 controller driver.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>A number of ports and packages do not build or do not
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run correctly under &os; &release.5x;, whereas they did under &os;
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4-STABLE. Generally these problems are caused by compiler
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toolchain changes or cleanups of header files. In some
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cases they are caused by changes in kernel or device
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support.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Many &os; &release.5x; features are
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seeing wide exposure for the first time. Many of these
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features (such as SMPng) have broad impacts on the
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kernel, and it may be difficult to gauge their effects on
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stability and performance.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>A certain amount of debugging and diagnostic code is
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still in place to help track down problems in &os; &release.5x;'s new
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features. This may cause &os; &release.5x; to perform more slowly
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than 4-STABLE.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Features are only added to the 4-STABLE development
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branch after a <quote>settling time</quote> in -CURRENT.
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&os; &release.5x; does not have the stabilizing influence of a
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-STABLE branch. (It is likely that the 5-STABLE development
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branch will be created sometime after
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&release.5branchpoint;.)</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Documentation (such as the &os; <ulink
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url="&url.books.handbook;/index.html">Handbook</ulink>
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and <ulink
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url="&url.books.faq;/index.html">FAQ</ulink>)
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may not reflect changes recently made to &os; &release.5x;.</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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<para>Because a number of these drawbacks affect system stability, the
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release engineering team recommends that more conservative sites
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and users stick to releases based on the 4-STABLE branch until
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the &release.5x; series is more polished. While we believe that
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many initial problems with stability have been fixed, some
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issues with performance are still being addressed by
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works-in-progress. We also note that best common practices in
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system administration call for trying operating system upgrades
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in a test environment before upgrading one's production, or
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<quote>mission-critical</quote> systems.</para>
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</sect1>
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<sect1 id="plans-stable">
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<title>Plans for the 4-STABLE Branch</title>
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<para>It is important to note that even though releases are being
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made in the &release.5x; series, support for &release.4x;
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releases will continue for some time.
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Indeed, &os; 4.8 was released two months after
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5.0, in April 2003, followed by 4.9, in October 2003,
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and 4.10 in May 2004.
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Future releases from the 4-STABLE branch (if any) will
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depend on several factors. The most important of these
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is the existence and stability of the 5-STABLE branch. If
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CURRENT is not sufficiently stable to allow the creation of a
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5-STABLE branch, this may require and permit more releases from
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the 4-STABLE branch. Until the last declared release
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on the 4-STABLE branch, new features may be merged from <literal>HEAD</literal> at
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the discretion of developers, subject to existing release
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engineering policies.</para>
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<para>To some extent, the release engineering team (as well as the
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developer community as a whole) will take into
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account user demand for future 4-STABLE releases. This demand,
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however, will need to be balanced with release engineering
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resources (particularly developers' time, computing resources, and mirror
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archive space). We note that in general, the &os; community
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(both users and developers) has shown a preference for
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moving forward with new features in
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the &release.5x; branch and beyond, due to the difficulty
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involved in backporting (and maintaining) new functionality in
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&release.4x;.</para>
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<para>The &a.security-officer; will continue to support releases
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made from the 4-STABLE branch in accordance with their published
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policies, which can be found on the <ulink
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url="&url.base;/security/index.html">Security
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page</ulink> on the &os; web site. Generally, the two most
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recent releases from any branch will be supported with respect
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to security advisories and security fixes. At its discretion,
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the team may support other releases for specific issues.</para>
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<para>At this point, the release engineering team has no specific
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plans for future releases from the 4-STABLE development branch,
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and we decided to maintain 4.10-RELEASE as <quote>Errata Branch</quote>.
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Previously a branch where a release is made has been maintained
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as <quote>Security Branch</quote> by the &a.security-officer;
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for a certain period, and they would only have critical
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security fixes applied. With FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE
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the scope of fixes will be expanded to include local
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Denial of Service fixes as well as other significant
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and well-tested fixes that may not represent security issues.
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While those fixes will not likely to be published
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as a <quote>release</quote> from the branch,
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the &os; Errata Notice will cover them in the same manner
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as the &os; Security Advisory.</para>
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</sect1>
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<sect1 id="upgrade">
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<title>Notes on Upgrading from &os; &release.4x;</title>
|
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|
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<para>For those users with existing &os; systems, this section
|
|
offers a few notes on upgrading a &os;
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&release.4x; system to
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&release.5x;. As with any &os; upgrade, it
|
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is crucial to read the release notes and the errata for the
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version in question, as well as
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<filename>src/UPDATING</filename> in the case of source upgrades.</para>
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<sect2>
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<title>Binary Upgrades</title>
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<para>Probably the most straightforward approach is that of
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<quote>backup everything, reformat, reinstall, and restore
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everything</quote>. This eliminates problems of incompatible
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or obsolete executables or configuration files polluting the
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new system. It allows new filesystems to be created to take
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advantage of new functionality (most notably, the UFS2
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defaults).</para>
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<para>As of this time, the binary upgrade option in
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&man.sysinstall.8; has not been well-tested for
|
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cross-major-version upgrades. Using this feature is not
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recommended. In particular, a binary upgrade will leave
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behind a number of files that are present in &os;
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&release.4x; but not in &release.5x;. These obsolete
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files may create some problems. Examples of these files
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include old C++ headers, programs moved to the Ports
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Collection, or shared libraries that have moved to support
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dynamically-linked root filesystem executables.</para>
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<para>On the &i386; and pc98 platforms, a UserConfig utility
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exists on 4-STABLE to allow boot-time configuration of ISA
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devices when booting from installation media. Under &os;
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&release.5x;, this functionality has been replaced in part by the
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&man.device.hints.5; mechanism (it allows specifying the same
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parameters, but with a very different interface).</para>
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<para>Floppy-based binary installations may require downloading
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a third, new floppy image holding additional device drivers
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in kernel modules. This <filename>drivers.flp</filename>
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floppy image will generally be found in the same location as
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the usual <filename>kern.flp</filename> and
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<filename>mfsroot.flp</filename> floppy images.</para>
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<para>CDROM-based installations on the &i386; architecture now use
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a <quote>no-emulation</quote> boot loader. This allows, among
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other things, the use of a <literal>GENERIC</literal> kernel,
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rather than the stripped-down kernel on the floppy images. In
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theory, any system capable of booting the µsoft; &windowsnt;
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4 installation CDROMs should be able to cope with the &os;
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&release.5x; CDROMs.</para>
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</sect2>
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<sect2>
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<title>Source Upgrades</title>
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|
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<para>Reading <filename>src/UPDATING</filename> is absolutely
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essential. The section entitled <quote>To upgrade from
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4.x-stable to current</quote> contains a step-by-step update
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procedure. This procedure must be followed exactly, without
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making use of the <quote>shortcuts</quote> that some users
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occasionally employ.</para>
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</sect2>
|
|
|
|
<sect2>
|
|
<title>Common Notes</title>
|
|
|
|
<para><application>Perl</application> has been removed from the
|
|
base system, and should be installed either
|
|
from a pre-built package or from the Ports Collection.
|
|
Building Perl as a part of the base system created a number of
|
|
difficulties which made updates problematic.
|
|
The base system utilities that used Perl have either
|
|
been rewritten (if still applicable) or discarded (if
|
|
obsolete). &man.sysinstall.8; will now install the
|
|
Perl package as a part of most distribution sets, so most
|
|
users will not notice this change.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para>It is generally possible to run old
|
|
&release.4x; executables under
|
|
&release.5x;, but this requires the
|
|
<filename>compat4x</filename> distribution to be installed.
|
|
Using old ports may be possible in some cases, although there
|
|
are a number of known cases of backward incompatibility. As an
|
|
example, the
|
|
<filename role="package">devel/gnomevfs2</filename>,
|
|
<filename role="package">mail/postfix</filename>, and
|
|
<filename role="package">security/cfs</filename> ports need to
|
|
be recompiled due to changes in the <literal>statfs</literal>
|
|
structure.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para>When installing or upgrading over the top of an existing
|
|
4-STABLE-based system, it is extremely important to clear out
|
|
old header files in <filename>/usr/include</filename>.
|
|
Renaming or moving this directory before a binary installation
|
|
or an <literal>installworld</literal> is generally
|
|
sufficient. If this step is not taken, confusion may result
|
|
(especially with C++ programs) as the compiler may wind up
|
|
using a mixture of obsolete and current header files.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para><filename>MAKEDEV</filename> is no longer available, nor
|
|
is it required.
|
|
FreeBSD &release.5x; uses a device filesystem, which automatically
|
|
creates device nodes on demand. For more information,
|
|
please see &man.devfs.5;.</para>
|
|
|
|
<para>UFS2 is the default on-disk format for file systems
|
|
created using &man.newfs.8;. For all platforms except pc98,
|
|
it is also the default for file systems created using the disk
|
|
labeling screen within &man.sysinstall.8;. Because &os;
|
|
&release.4x; only understands UFS1 (not UFS2), disk partitions
|
|
that need to be accessed by both &release.5x; and &release.4x;
|
|
must be created with UFS1. This can be specified using the
|
|
<option>-O1</option> option to &man.newfs.8;, or on the disk
|
|
labeling screen in &man.sysinstall.8;. This situation most
|
|
often arises with a a single machine that dual-boots &os;
|
|
&release.4x; and &os; &release.5x;. Note that there is no way
|
|
to convert file systems between the two on-disk formats (other
|
|
than backing up, re-creating the file system, and
|
|
restoring).</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect2>
|
|
</sect1>
|
|
|
|
<sect1 id="summary">
|
|
|
|
<title>Summary</title>
|
|
|
|
<para>While &os; &release.current; contains a number of new and exciting
|
|
features, it may not be suitable for all users at this time. In
|
|
this document, we presented some background on release
|
|
engineering, some of the more notable new features of the &release.5x;
|
|
series, and some drawbacks to early adoption. We also presented
|
|
some future plans for the 4-STABLE development branch and some
|
|
tips on upgrading for early adopters.</para>
|
|
|
|
</sect1>
|
|
</article>
|