Evilcoder.org

We are closely following the schedule for FreeBSD 7.2, and so far we are on the correct schedule. Some caveats had been resolved lately, especially it seems with if_bce. Please give RC2 a spin and report any regression etc to us so that we can try to fix this.

So i wrote some articles recently for 7.1 and the release-cycle around it to try and provide as much possible information without telling you all things that we as a project cannot make true etc. I see that my “how to upgrade to 7.1″ article is being read a lot, in fact it is one of the most popular items in my entire article-range. Which made me wonder about a few things, which I hope that you (my readers) can answer:

*) Is FreeBSD 7.1 long awaited and popular?
*) Aren’t there enough documents that provide this straight to the point information? (Do this and this and you have 7.1 running)
*) Should I proceed with these kind of articles for the future release-cycle’s?
*) How is 7.1 being received? Do you like it? Do you hate it?

Reasons I want to know this, is whether I should bring in my attention to this area now which I might be doing a ‘difference’ again, and whether it really helps the community or not. And last but not least ofcourse, we tried to work hard to bring you the best release possible, but I personally cannot entirely judge how the community received our work. I think we did great, but I cannot speak for you

If you read this, and are willing to help, please respond to this article

Thanks,
Remko

After writing my little blog on how to upgrade to 7.1 I got several people telling me that the freebsd-update servers were slow, irresponsive etc. From the information that Colin send to FreeBSD-stable it seems that a lot of people were really waiting for 7.1 to come out, and that they all wanted to upgrade. Colin had made improvements to the system so that it can better deal with the load.

The good thing from this is that a lot of people ARE interested in the latest version, as well as that they use the easy to use application “freebsd-update”. If you run a -RELEASE version, you should use this to easily and quickly upgrade to a later revision.

Keep those bits rolling!

So the announcement had been send, the FreeBSD version 7.1 had been released

Please report any bugs and things that you can find on www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html so that we can try our best to iron out the open items.

I need to MFC a few things here and there which is now possible again, so prepare for a lot of fun

So, recently I told you all that the 7.1-RELEASE is near, and you might have expected it already. You guys are too jumpy though . It will be there in the first week(s) of january. It will kick 2009’s ass to start with and your waiting will be pleased (hopefully). Just wait a tiny bit longer and you’ll see

With 7.1 around the corner it might be handy to tell what you need to do in order to upgrade.

First of all you need to understand that I am in no way responsible for the actions you are doing on your system. I can give an advise, but if there is one typo somewhere it could trash your system. That is the case now, and it will forever be as long as there are computers

That said: Do you know what kind of user you are?

Did you install via the CD and never heared about CVSup? SVN? and things like that?

Then FreeBSD-update (/usr/sbin/freebsd-update) is the thing for you!
It’s the most simple way to upgrade from a previous -RELEASE (or Security branch) to the current one. Do note that -STABLE or -RC’s are not taken into account and cannot be used to upgrade to 7.1-RELEASE.

In order for you to upgrade please use : /usr/sbin/freebsd-update -r 7.1-RELEASE upgrade && /usr/sbin/freebsd-update -r 7.1-RELEASE install

After this the system will tell you:

Kernel updates have been installed. Please reboot and run
“/usr/sbin/freebsd-update install” again to finish installing updates.

(Thanks richard for the information):

Voila, you will be running 7.1 now!

For people using CVSup: replace the RELENG_7_0 part with RELENG_7_1 (it’s ok if there are other things behind it, as long as you change the zero to a one (0 -> 1)).

Rebuild your kernel as you probably did many times before (cd /usr/src && make buildworld && make buildkernel && make installkernel [reboot in single user mode] mergemaster -p && make installworld && make delete-old && mergemaster [reboot] make delete-old-libs (be careful that ports and things do not depend on older versions. I have been bitten by an account that used the bash shell, with libreadline, which was deleted by make delete-old-libs.. no more bash shell for me!)

If you are doing CVS checkouts you should probably do something with -r RELENG_7_1 or RELENG_7_1_RELEASE to get things going, I would advise the first one since patches will be installed there as well, the _RELEASE branch is static. Then do the tricks like above as well.

If you are a subversion user you should checkout the 7.1 release (all subversion users know how to do this) and perform a bit of magic.

After some waiting, the FreeBSD team will release the 7.1 version shortly. There were a few showstoppers here and there, a security advisory that popped up and needed attention, but we all overcame that and are ready to do the release. Ofcourse that isn’t being released as we speak, but it’s -very- soon now. 7.1 will kick 2009’s ass to begin with. Then followed by a stunning 8.0-release later that year. It promises to be a very good year for us at the FreeBSD development teams, but also for the users ofcourse!.

Please hold your breath and say “ooeeeee ahhhhh” when the release is there!

Enjoy!

Today the Port management team released the FreeBSD Ports Tree. The Tree is still in a Slush state (no sweeping changes) like the Documentation Tree has, but the tagging for the release is done. Currently the cluster is building the required packages that will be accompanied on the -RELEASE distributions. The next major things is the build of the -RELEASE-CANDIDATE’s which could start any moment ( I am not aware of the most recent planning for them, I will post more info when I know them)

Today Erwin Lansing froze the FreeBSD Ports tree in preparation for the 6.4 and 7.1 releases. That basically means that no one can commit to the ports tree without prior approval from the Ports Management team.

The freeze is done to give the machines in the build cluster the time to build packages for both releases, which can be included on the CD’s and uploaded to the various FTP-mirrors so that you (The end user) can use them when you install the versions.

Certain people will get a blanket from the Ports Management team, so that they can improve the current ports and document Security Vulnerabilities where needed, and ofcourse update the packages if that is required.

Stay Tuned

Several hours after 7.1-PRERELEASE name had been created within 7-STABLE, not branched!, 6.4 had also been named for the time being from 6-STABLE. That means that that branch will also soon split into 6.4-RELEASE (the final branch) to continue for the release. As well as for 7.1.. NO PANIC! It will all be over soon, and you can use a brand new release