The next major release of FreeBSD, version 8, will probably be an “evolutional” release. The focus will be on further improvements of SMP capabilities and the stability of already implemented subsystems. This page will document changes that will be included in FreeBSD 8, including those that might end up being committed to earlier branches (i.e. it describes differences between 7.0 and 8.0).

Also useful are the quarterly Status Reports:

• 2007 / Q3

Everyone’s encouraged to download a snapshot CD image and try all the new features (as well as the old ones). Developers are very interested in bug reports. Note that FreeBSD 8.0 is not released yet.

If you’re interested in how FreeBSD gets developed, you’re encouraged to read the mailing lists and developer blogs.

Storage subsystems’ improvements

Boot support for GPT partitions

Status: Committed to -CURRENT
Will appear in 8.0: sure
Author: John Baldwin
Web: commit message

Support for booting from GPT partitions has been committed to -CURRENT. This support includes the boot sector and loader that enable common i386 machines with a generic BIOS to boot from GPT-partitioned drives.

Kernel & low level improvements

Kernel threads

Status: Committed to -CURRENT
Will appear in 8.0: sure
Author: Julian Elischer
Web: commit message

Kernel threads upto now were actually “heavy weight” processes running in the kernel address space. This change introduces real light weight kernel threads which consume less low-level resources (process locks, memory maps). It also allows better grouping of threads for display purposes.

More info is in here What’s cooking for FreeBSD 8? by Ivan Voras who is a FreeBSD committer

The development version of FreeBSD 7.0 AMD64 and I386 scale a lot better then linux on SMP systems, which being worked on by the FreeBSD core members to release 7.0-RELEASE , currently it’s frozen and so stable it, I use it in my server which has

A combination of latest freebsd scheduler ULE 2.0 which was developed by Jeff Roberson that is built into FreeBSD 7.0, the libthr threading library and a patch (not commited, yet ? ) that addresses poor scalability of file descriptor locking and some other patches is what made a system with 8 core amd64 cpu and 16 GB of ram outperform linux by a factor of 4 in MySQL tests.

The tests were performed using sysbench OLTP benchmark, a tool designed for testing mysql performance.

Brief test results: Linux is actually a little ( ~ 2% ) faster then FreeBSD for less then 9 clients, but when the number of clients grows to 20 linux performance drops a lot and FreeBSD’s performance stays the same.

More details about the test here:

http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/mysql.html

Latest changes in here

PC-BSD is a direct descendant of FreeBSD. As the name indicates, PC-BSD is a BSD operating system which lays stress on its use as a Desktop catering to the end users.

From the point of its inception, the USP (Unique Selling Point) of PC-BSD has been to make it as easy as possible to install, update and use software, at the same time bringing all the powerful security features and stability of the traditional BSDs.

For one, in October 2006 PC-BSD got acquired by iXsystems which is now in control of the project - though Kris Moore, the founder of PC-BSD is still its project leader and has the final say, apart from the acquisition, the project has moved quite smoothly.

One of the main changes I can see for PC-BSD 1.3 when compared to ver 1.0 is the drastic enhancement of the graphical installer with a couple of additional options thrown in.

For example, at the time of installation, there is an option to encrypt the swap partition, there are options to open or close most popular ports such as the port used by SSH and so on, a choice of enabling or disabling the firewall and with a few clicks you finish installing the OS.

Fig: PC-BSD desktop

The current version of PC-BSD is ver 1.3.4. Some time back, I had downloaded ver 1.3.0 of PC-BSD and had installed it on my machine, PC-BSD team have made it possible to upgrade the OS to the most recent version - 1.3.4 by downloading and installing a couple of patch files. Thus I had to download and install just over 40 MB of patch files which are made available in PBI format, to upgrade PC-BSD from ver 1.3.0 to 1.3.4. As a matter of fact, you do not even have to download individual files yourself to upgrade the OS. There is a GUI tool called “PC-BSD Online Update” which can be accessed by navigating through KDE Menu -> Settings -> System Administration -> “PC-BSD Online Update”, that can be configured to automatically detect if there are updates available and then download and install them for you.

Post Installation scenario

It is really remarkable that the installation of PC-BSD went without any glitch and all the peripherals were detected properly. Sound worked out of the box and in no time, I was face to face with the graphical login screen. PC-BSD is a KDE centric operating system and comes with the latest version of KDE ver 3.5.5 and many useful software installed by default.

Once I logged into PC-BSD, I navigated to the PBI resource web page which contain the latest versions of most popular software such as FireFox 2.0.0.3, OpenOffice.org and so on and started installing those software which I use on a regular basis. As far as PC-BSD is concerned, you do not have to worry about dependencies as each PBI is a stand alone package which contain all the necessary libraries needed to run the program. So FireFox PBI will contain not just the FireFox binary but also dependent libraries as well.

Fig: It is possible to schedule the update of the OS to install security patches.

The PBI (short for PC-BSD Installer) is a GUI installer that is similar to its Windows counterpart, and is coded using Qt. To install a software, just double click on the respective PBI and follow the instructions. You also have the option of cleanly uninstalling the software from within the PC-BSD software manager.

Fig: View and remove the installed PBIs

Essential housekeeping in PC-BSD

One of the first things you should do the first time you boot into PC-BSD is to update the ports and install them. PC-BSD uses the FreeBSD 6.1 ports. And when you install software using the ports, you are essentially installing FreeBSD software. But unlike FreeBSD where you have to dabble with command line to update and install the ports, in PC-BSD, you can do the same using the GUI front-end with the click of a button (See the image below).

Fig: Install ports with the click of a button

Next I had to install the multimedia codecs to enable PC-BSD to play audio and video files in proprietary media formats. As with all Open Source projects, PC-BSD also follows the principle of not shipping the proprietary codecs by default and requires that the end user install them by themselves if they want to. Here is the interesting part. To install the multimedia codecs, all I had to do was to download and install the requisite PBI file from the PBI online repository. And viola!!, I was able to not only play wmv and quick time files but also watch encrypted DVD movies as well.

Fig: Kaffene media player detects all the codecs.

I have an Nvidia graphics card and I wanted PC-BSD to harness the full potential of the graphics card. Usually you can get along very well with the Nvidia open source driver but if you want to use OpenGL programs for instance, you need to install the proprietary driver. In the PBI repository, you will find a number of builds of Nvidia proprietary drivers for PC-BSD and you can choose the best package which works for you.

I found enabling Flash to be a little tricky affair, Mainly because Adobe has not yet released Flash Player ver 9.0 for BSDs, And the linux emulator build of Flash player for BSDs is still at ver 7.0. While you can very well install this version of flash player, many flash enabled websites now a days require you to have version 8.0 or above to view them - a big handicap for BSD users. One work around you have for PC-BSD is to install the Linux version of FireFox web browser. You heard me right. It is possible to install most Linux software and run them without any modification in PC-BSD. This is made possible because PC-BSD has a FreeBSD Linux compatible module installed.

I installed the Linux version of the latest build of FireFox from the PBI online repository as well as the Flash player ver 9.0 from here. And I was able to view flash websites without any problem. Of course I encountered a minor glitch in that each time I open two flash based websites simultaneously, Linux version of FireFox crashes. But by and large I was able to manage as long as I had only one flash website open at any given time.

I also downloaded and installed Sun’s JDK 1.5 from the PBI online repository.

Is PC-BSD a FreeBSD clone ?

At first glance, one might be tempted to pass off PC-BSD as a clone of FreeBSD with some frills thrown in, as PC-BSD uses the FreeBSD ports. And it is easy to think that if you are installing software using ports, you are essentially getting FreeBSD software. But on close scrutiny, I was able to find notable differences. Some of them are as follows :

• A GUI installer which eases the installation process.
• Use of PBIs to install many software.
• Many GUI front-ends which aid package management.
• Easily start/stop and enable/disable services via its equivalent GUI.
• Use of blacklist script to automatically ban IP addresses of machines of potential crackers who try to hack into your machine.

Suggested fixed for PC-BSD

1. When a user enters a root password to do system administration tasks using GUI, PC-BSD should offer to remember the root password so that the user does not have to enter it the next time he want to run a program in super user mode. Many Linux distributions such as Debian and Fedora have this feature. At present, if I want to install say 10 PBI’s I have to enter the root password 10 times - ie. each time I execute the PBI, it asks for root password which gets really tedious. KDE dialog has a check box which offers to “keep the password” but it doesn’t seem to have any effect.
2. The PBI should have an option to install software system wide or on a per user basis. This suggestion might seem strange but in a multi-user environment, it is not possible to hand over the root password to every one. And if a user wants to try out a software by downloading the PBI, he should be allowed to install it in his home directory if he cannot enter the root password.
3. The PBI should also support execution from the command line. This is not a must have feature but it can be convenient to execute and install a PBI package in certain situations where you have booted into console mode.
4. It would be nice to have a GUI front-end which allows a lay person to write custom firewall rules for PF.

Epilogue

PC-BSD is turning out to be an excellent alternative to Linux popular Desktop OSes.

After testing and using PC-BSD for some time now, I can’t but admire the sheer amount of work that is put into creating, developing and molding an OS for the lay person albeit with a strong slant towards FreeBSD. The fact that PC-BSD is able to accomplish all the tasks expected by an end user - be it using the Internet for communication, listening to music, watching movies or using it for recreation purposes holds it in good stead as a viable Desktop OS.

FlightAware is a free flight tracker that will change what you think about live flight tracking and aviation data.

BSD Talk #42 has an interview Karl Lehenbauer about FlightAware.com. FlightAware tracks flight information, so far example here is their page on live flights to and from Sacramento Executive Airport. There is a lot of information that they are making available for free. Here is an outline of some of the more interesting bits that were mentioned by Karl during the interview.

All of FlightAware’s systems are 64-bit AMD based computers running FreeBSD 6.x, specifically the FreeBSD/AMD64 port.

They use PostgreSQL for the database back end. Slony 1 is being used to replicate data. Hard drives are in a RAID 1 (mirroring) configuration using 3ware controllers.

Now for some numbers:

• Receiving the data and processing it puts them about 6 minutes behind real time.
• Generating one map can be done in about 160 milliseconds of CPU time.
• Capable of generating several million maps a day.
• About 1 TB of stored data.
• Approximately 40 million position updates on air craft per day.

PostgreSQL wasn’t able to keep up with the updates so they wrote a memory resident database service queries. I’m still not exactly clear on what the relationship is between PostgreSQL and their memory resident database, which uses about 1 GB of RAM.

Nice to see a company putting FreeBSD and PostgreSQL to good use. I’m curious about the 40 million inserts per day number. Bring on the math!

• 40,000,000 inserts per day
• 40,000,000 / 24 = 1,666,667 inserts per hour
• 1,666,6667 / 60 = 27,778 inserts per minute
• 27,227 / 60 = 463 inserts per second

So that boils down to about 463 inserts per second on average. I’d expect that their actual peak requirements are much higher than that (perhaps two or three times that number?). That is just data that they are receiving, that doesn’t include the queries being run against their system to power the website. This brings up another question, how much bandwidth do they have dedicated to receiving these updates? It is possible that each individual update is fairly small (lat, long, src, dest, flight id, airline, plane type, etc) so that might not be too bad. Even at 256 bytes per update, doing 40 million of those a day adds up very quickly.

This will run faster in FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE When it got released with ULE 2.0 which was done by Jeff Roberson a FreeBSD commiter

After over a year as the development version, and off-and-on development, the developer of popular MidpSSH has released version 1.6.0 of MidpSSH.

This is functionally identical to the last development version 1.5.7.

The major features are Keyboard Interactive authentication and an HTTP proxy solution for people behind telcos firewalls.

If you don’t know about MidpSSH, it is an SSH client for use on Java enabled mobile devices such as cell phones.

If you use SSH then MidpSSH could save you a trip to a computer if you’re in a bind.

It works like a charm in my E61

MidpSSH Download link http://www.xk72.com/midpssh/download.php

And here is the developer blog for this release http://xk72.com/blog/2007/02/27/midpssh-stable-version-160-released/

Abdullah Ibn Hamad Al-Marri

Arab Portal

1.4 will bring a new user management utility to PC-BSD. I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to take you all through it, with some screenshots.

With the user manager, I wanted to cater to both experienced, and novice users alike. As such, I’ve split the entire application into two views, both of which operate the same backend.

Simple View

As you can see, the simple view, is exactly that. It allows the novice to easily add and remove users. Other than that, you can change passwords, the administrator’s (root) password, and edit a couple of simple options. You’ll notice an option there called ‘Can administrate system’. This option does nothing other than add your user to the wheel group. This means they’ll be able to use sudo (the wheel group is included by default in 1.4), and the su command, amongst other things.

However, those of you reading this are probably more interested in the advanced view.

Advanced View - User Tab

Advanced View - Group Tab

Our older, more perceptive users may be reminded of the user manager found in the early 1.x series, well, that’s for good reason. The UI is almost identical. It was removed from PC-BSD in favour of the DesktopBSD tool due to a couple of issues with it, namely it didn’t handle the skel directory properly.

However, the backend has been completely re-engineered, bringing a much better level of functionality. The advanced view allows customisation of all the core user attributes. Colour highlighting is used to indicate problems, and potential issues. You can see in that screenshot that the ‘Home’ box is orange. That’s because it’s outside of the recommended location, namely /home, if you were to hover of the box, it would tell you this. A common theme across this tool, that you’ll also find in the PC-BSD installer, is this colour highlighting. Red means there are critical problems that you can’t proceed with, orange is just a warning.

This can be shown more clearly in the password dialog.

Change Password

As you can see, the passwords don’t match, the box becomes red. You can see here the message displayed if you were to hover over the red box.

Add User

The add user dialog above, exhibits the same features, for an integrated experience.

The user manager is currently under going beta testing, if you want to join in testing this application, and others as they become available (network manager is also in testing), then join the testing list:
http://lists.pcbsd.org/mailman/listinfo/testing

See the archives of that list for previous announcements.

–
Tim McCormick
PC-BSD Lead Developer

PC-BSD Announces Redistribution Agreement with Adobe Systems

iXsystems announced an agreement with Adobe Systems that will allow the next version of PC-BSD to have a Flash-enabled browser available on a default installation. The Linux version of Adobe’s popular Flash player will run on PC-BSD using FreeBSD’s Linux compatibility layer.

Having Flash player available by default on PC-BSD will allow users to view Flash content on popular sites such as YouTube, Yahoo Video, and Grouper.

“The agreement with Adobe will allow PC-BSD to have a browser with Flash working immediately after installation of the operating system. This makes great strides toward the PC-BSD project’s commitment of having an easy-to-use OS with the modern browsing experience users expect and deserve,” said Matt Olander with the PC-BSD Project.

“Flash technology is the standard for developing and viewing rich internet applications. Users of PC-BSD as their day-to-day OS know that the inclusion of Adobe Flash player as a default option will enhance their user experience and expand the number of applications they can successfully run on their PCs”, said Michael Lauth, CEO of iXsystems.

This summarizes my experiences with FreeBSD 6.2 and FreeBSD 7.0 on an Acer Aspire 5102 WLMi laptop.
This applies to Acer Aspire 3100/5100/5110 since they use the same Motherboard, and Bios.

X-Windows

The stock ATI driver in 6.2-RELEASE does handle the ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 chipset in this machine as ATI 200M, and it handles the 1280×800 screen size, but no 3D since AMD/ATI doesn’t provide drivers for FreeBSD and *BSD in General.

Identifier “Card0″
Driver “ati”
VideoRam 131072
VendorName “ATI Technologies Inc”
BoardName “RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M]”
BusID “PCI:1:5:0″
I could control the Display brightness via the Fn key as well.

Note: The best video chips support comes from Nvidia since they provide native driver for FreeBSD and support Forum for FreeBSD as well

ACPI

It’s known Acer doesn’t offer the best ACPI standards, but it just works.

Aspire5102# sysctl hw.acpi
hw.acpi.supported_sleep_state: S3 S4 S5
hw.acpi.power_button_state: S5
hw.acpi.sleep_button_state: S3
hw.acpi.lid_switch_state: NONE
hw.acpi.standby_state: S1
hw.acpi.suspend_state: S3
hw.acpi.sleep_delay: 1
hw.acpi.s4bios: 0
hw.acpi.verbose: 1
hw.acpi.disable_on_reboot: 0
hw.acpi.handle_reboot: 0
hw.acpi.reset_video: 0
hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest: C1
hw.acpi.thermal.min_runtime: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.polling_rate: 10
hw.acpi.thermal.user_override: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature: 44.0C
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.passive_cooling: 1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.thermal_flags: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._PSV: 78.0C
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._HOT: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._CRT: 95.0C
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._ACx: 50.0C -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
hw.acpi.battery.life: 100
hw.acpi.battery.time: -1
hw.acpi.battery.state: 0
hw.acpi.battery.units: 1
hw.acpi.battery.info_expire: 5
hw.acpi.acline: 1

Sound

The sound RealTek HDA (High-Definition Audio), aka Azalia, didn’t work, but the this chipset is finally supported by Eng. Ariff Abdullah in FreeBSD ! Yay ! See his page for HOWTO make your chip works like a charm Ariff Abdullah

Also you need to add this line in your /boot/loader.conf to make the sound drivers loaded and the chip works.

snd_hda_load=”YES”

Note: OpenSuse 10.2 isn’t able to make it work with ALSA.

WLAN

It worked with ndisgen tool which is builtin with the FreeBSD to convert windows drivers to Kernel Modules and make your wireless runs, check my blog, about how I did it.

HOWTO: FreeBSD 6.2 ndisgen with Acer Aspire 5100 5102 WLMi with Broadcom Wlan chipset 4318 Rev 2

ndis0: <Dell TrueMobile 1300 WLAN Mini-PCI Card> mem 0xc0200000-0xc0201fff irq 22 at device 2.0 on pci6
ndis0: Reserved 0×2000 bytes for rid 0×10 type 3 at 0xc0200000
ioapic0: routing intpin 22 (PCI IRQ 22) to vector 53
ndis0: [MPSAFE]
ndis0: NDIS API version: 5.1
ndis0: bpf attached
ndis0: Ethernet address: 00:16:cf:57:a3:7f
ndis0: bpf attached

Bluetooth

FreeBSD can detect the Bluetooh and run it with no issues.

dev.ugen.0.%desc: vendor 0×0402 USB2.0 Camera, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 2
dev.ugen.0.%driver: ugen
dev.ugen.0.%location: port=1
dev.ugen.0.%pnpinfo: vendor=0×0402 product=0×5602 devclass=0×00 devsubclass=0×00 release=0×0100 sernum=”"
dev.ugen.0.%parent: uhub1
dev.ugen.1.%desc: Broadcom Corp Acer Module, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 3
dev.ugen.1.%driver: ugen
dev.ugen.1.%location: port=2
dev.ugen.1.%pnpinfo: vendor=0×0a5c product=0×2101 devclass=0xe0 devsubclass=0×01 release=0×0100 sernum=”"
dev.ugen.1.%parent: uhub1
PowerNow!

This laptop has AMD Turion64 X2 and AMD PowerNow! works with no problems at all, PowerNow! done by Mr. Bruno Ducrot a good and helpful FreeBSD Commiter and other commiters in FreeBSD as well.

dev.cpu.0.%desc: ACPI CPU
dev.cpu.0.%driver: cpu
dev.cpu.0.%location: handle=\_PR_.CPU0
dev.cpu.0.%pnpinfo: _HID=none _UID=0
dev.cpu.0.%parent: acpi0
dev.cpu.0.freq: 1592
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 1592/70000 796/19383
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/0
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 100.00%
dev.cpu.1.%desc: ACPI CPU
dev.cpu.1.%driver: cpu
dev.cpu.1.%location: handle=\_PR_.CPU1
dev.cpu.1.%pnpinfo: _HID=none _UID=0
dev.cpu.1.%parent: acpi0
dev.cpu.1.cx_supported: C1/0
dev.cpu.1.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.1.cx_usage: 100.00%

Final note: in the future I will only buy laptop/notebook comes Nvidia Video Chips since they support FreeBSD very well, no more AMD/ATI for video.

This is a post by Hanno Krusken to FreeBSD-Mobile@FreeBSD.Org for users will upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE from previous versions of FreeBSD 6.x

–

Hi all,

well this posting is send before, part of, the specific upgrade hint regarding the iwi0 driver !

now, FreeBSD-6.1-RELENG uses /usr/ports/net/iwi-firmware, but after the upgrade to FreeBSD-6.2-RELENG iwi0 will NOT work, you need to prefetch the port file /usr/ports/net/iwi-firmware-kmod !! you need to “make fetch” the distfile “ipw2200-fw-3.0.tgz” befor you “make buildworld” or you will not get your Wlan working if you relay on iwi0 to do your upgrades !!!
after fetching the “ipw2200-fw-3.0.tgz” file place it in /usr/ports/distfiles, rebuild the system to FreeBSD-6.2, install /usr/ports/net/iwi-firmware-kmod and you are done !!!

the rest of this posting is just a step by step way of doing the bulidworld upgrade….

specially for the novice of you, please read carefully !!

OK, this is a “the step-by-step GUIDE” to do a FreeBSD-RELENG-upgrade + BUILDWORLD process, using CVSUP

I have seen a lot of “buildworld” questions, and even more tips, on this news-group and now, finally I provide my “GUIDE” for all FreeBSD-RELENG-X.xx, builds, patches, ports-upgrades, in hope it will be help full for any one who still has problems building the system………. to make a “BUILDWORLD” as fast, safe and easy as possible using the CVSUP way !
You will find your answer to most of your questions below………
NOTE !!!
I only pull together and compress all the tips and information’s out of news-groups, BSD-handbook, O’Reilly’s publications and most my own try-and-error experiences. Even if it seams not quite perfect for some BSD-Gurus, but it happily dose the job for me, highly customised kernel and 520-installed-ports in one go, with out trouble.

I used this steps for years now on all FreeBSD-releng-4.8, 4.9, 4.10, 4.11, 5.4, 5.5, 6.0 and on all patch levels.
(well 4.x wont’s it the old way, but 5.x and 6.x sweeps flawless ahead)
-KERNEL-FILE
/etc/standard-supfile
/etc/ports-supfile

### STEP-BY-STEP the stupid way, but easy as that “1+2\u003d3a” or “1+2\u003d3b” ………… ;o)
###
### 1.) FETCHING SRC-SOURCE BY CVSUP, CLEANING SYSTEM AND RUNNING BUILDWORLD !!
### 2.) BOOT UP IN SINGLE MODE, MERGEMASTER AND INSTALLWORLD !!
### 3-a.) use for: RELEASE-PATCH-UPGRADE + DAILY-PORTS-UPGRADE AND FINISH !!
### 3-b.) or use for: FULL-RELEASE-UPGRADE + FULL-PORTS-UPGRADE AND FINISH !!
“,1] ); //–>Recently upgraded my Laptop from FreeBSD-5.4-p15 to FreeBSD-5.5-p1 and a FreeBSD-6.0 with out any problems,
it will work for FreeBSD-6.1 and above as well………… promised ;o)

Usually CVSUP the source, fetch the distfiles and e-mails in a pub with WiFi WLan down the road on my Laptop, have a beer or two, compile, build, install the rest on the way home and over night if needed.
No joke, I have no DSL, ISDN or phone at home but it works sweet for me,
beer taste better than a phone bill ;o) and keeps my system up-to-date as well.

Now to make it even more convenience to fetch it all, using “fastest_cvsup” for the source is a treat, but to keep it simple in this “guide” I’ll only describe the basic way. (at the end of this mail you’ll find a small script to CVSUP with “fatetest_cvsup̶ any way ;o)

Over all, a “buildworld” or “upgrade” with this guide will only work if your config files are OK before you carry on to follow this “guide”: !!
Make sure the following files are looked over and work sweet !!!!
you’ll run in to a lot of error messages, if not crafted carefully to suit your machine!!
you have to tweak this files first, to match your system, before you even can think about calling a buildworld-step out of this guide !!!
build a customs kernel first and you get in to it.
If your machine boots up with your own kernel, give it a go……..

/etc/make.conf
/usr/src/sys/i386/conf/YOUR-KERNEL-FILE
/etc/standard-supfile
/etc/ports-supfile

### STEP-BY-STEP the stupid way, but easy as that “1+2=3a” or “1+2=3b” ………… ;o)
###
### 1.) FETCHING SRC-SOURCE BY CVSUP, CLEANING SYSTEM AND RUNNING BUILDWORLD !!
### 2.) BOOT UP IN SINGLE MODE, MERGEMASTER AND INSTALLWORLD !!
### 3-a.) use for: RELEASE-PATCH-UPGRADE + DAILY-PORTS-UPGRADE AND FINISH !!
### 3-b.) or use for: FULL-RELEASE-UPGRADE + FULL-PORTS-UPGRADE AND FINISH !!
###
### BUILDWORLD PROCESS WITH CVSUP:
### “guide” for system upgrade:
### all action as “root” or “su” to root ;o)
###———————-
### 1.) FETCHING SRC SOURCE BY CVSUP, CLEANING SYSTEM AND RUNNING BUILDWORLD:

# cvsup -g -L 2 /etc/standard-supfile ### (you need to be online for this one to fetch the “source̶

# cd /usr/obj

# chflags -R noschg *

# rm -rf *

# cd /usr/src

# make cleanworld

# make buildworld

# make buildkernel KERNCONF=YOUR-KERNEL-FILE

# make installkernel KERNCONF=YOUR-KERNEL-FILE

# reboot

###———————-
### 2.) BOOT UP IN SINGLE MODE, MERGEMASTER AND INSTALLWORLD !!!

# hit the <space-key> if boot up delay counter starts !!

# boot -s

# fsck -p
# mount -u /
# mount -a
# cd /usr/src
# adjkerntz -i

# cd /usr/src

# mergemaster -p ### pre-buildworld mode, only essential files !

# make installworld

# make delete-old

# cp -Rp /etc /etc.old

# mergemaster -cv ### do all changes as needed, take your time and think, redo every step if unsure !!! … or you can hack the files by hand ….

# reboot

###———————–
### 3-a.) use FOR RELEASE-PATCH-UPGRADE, DAILY-PORTS-UPGRADE AND FINISH !!
### BOOT UP IN NORMAL MODE, PORTS UPGRADE AND FINISH !!!

### open a “xterm” if running in X11

# su

# Password:

# uname -a

# cd /usr/src

# make delete-old-libs

# make clean

# cvsup -g -L 2 /etc/ports-supfile ### (you need to be online for this one to fetch the “ports collection̶

# cd /usr/ports

# make fetchindex ### (or “make index” but takes time)

———————
### my “/etc/cvsup-new” script called out of my X11 BlackBox-menu and for daily use:
—————————————————
[submenu] (CVS upgrade̷ {}
[exec] (cvs-new) {sudo -S xterm -e /etc/cvs-new}
[exec] (cvs src) {sudo -S xterm -e cvsup /etc/standard-supfile}
[exec] (cvs ports) {sudo -S xterm -e cvsup /etc/ports-supfile}
[exec] (cvs doc) {sudo -S xterm -e cvsup /etc/doc-supfile}
[exec] (fetch portupgrade) {xterm -sb -pob -e sudo -S portupgrade -rRaF}
“,1] ); //–># portupgrade -rRaF ### (you need to be online for this one to fetch the “distfiles” SKIP THIS STEP IF PERMANENT ONLINE)

# portupgrade -rRa ### (you can go offline for this one now)

### RESTART X11 and/or boot !!! FINISHED )

###———————–
### 3-b.) FOR FULL-RELEASE-UPGRADE, AND FULL-PORTS-UPGRADE AND FINISH !!!
### (AFTER RELEASE UPGRADE) -> after FreeBSD upgrade from 5.4 to 5.x, 6.x or newer !!

# cvsup -g -L 2 /etc/ports-supfile ### (you need to be online for this one to fetch the “ports collection̶

# cd /usr/ports

# make fetchindex ### (or “make index” but takes time)

# portupgrade -rRafF ### (you need to be online for this one to fetch the “distfiles” SKIP THIS STEP IF PERMANENT ONLINE)

# portupgrade -afk ### (you can go offline for this one now)

# pkgdb -uf && cd /usr/ports/lang/pyton && make upgrade-side-packages

# pkgdb -F

# reboot

### FINISHED )

—————————————————
### my “/etc/cvsup-new” script called out of my X11 BlackBox-menu and for daily use:
—————————————————
[submenu] (CVS upgrade̷ {}
[exec] (cvs-new) {sudo -S xterm -e /etc/cvs-new}
[exec] (cvs src) {sudo -S xterm -e cvsup /etc/standard-supfile}
[exec] (cvs ports) {sudo -S xterm -e cvsup /etc/ports-supfile}
[exec] (cvs doc) {sudo -S xterm -e cvsup /etc/doc-supfile}
[exec] (fetch portupgrade) {xterm -sb -pob -e sudo -S portupgrade -rRaF}
——————
#!/bin/sh
if SERVER\u003d`fastest_cvsup -q -c uk,dk,de`; then
cvsup -h $SERVER /etc/standard-supfile
fi

if SERVER\u003d`fastest_cvsup -q -c uk,dk,de`; then
cvsup -h $SERVER /etc/ports-supfile
fi
—————————————————-

good luck…. have fun……… ;o)

PS.
I\’m not listening to “stupid destructive critics” …… winching and carrying on playing with M$-WinVirus on there own !!! ………
But I\’ll be open for constructive tips, tweak this GUIDE to enrich the way of FreeBSD for every one !!! ……
thanks ;o)
XXX

“,1] ); D([”mb”,”

Hanno Krusken

“,1] ); //–> [exec] (portupgrade -rRa) {xterm -sb -pob -e sudo -S portupgrade -rRa}
[exec] (pkgdb -F) {xterm -sb -pob -e sudo -S pkgdb -F}
[end]

—”/etc/cvsup-new”—————————–
#!/bin/sh
if SERVER=`fastest_cvsup -q -c uk,dk,de`; then
cvsup -h $SERVER /etc/standard-supfile
fi

if SERVER=`fastest_cvsup -q -c uk,dk,de`; then
cvsup -h $SERVER /etc/ports-supfile
fi
—————————————————-

good luck…. have fun……… ;o)

PS.
I’m not listening to “stupid destructive critics” …… winching and carrying on playing with M$-WinVirus on there own !!! ………
But I’ll be open for constructive tips, tweak this GUIDE to enrich the way of FreeBSD for every one !!! ……
thanks ;o)
XXX
Hanno Krusken

–

Personally this how I upgrade my FreeBSD OS in the laptops I own in KDE Desktop.
I log as a root in the shell

Then I do these steps

#cd /usr/src

#make cleanworld

#mergemaster -p

#make buildworld

#make buildkernel

#make installkernel
#reboot

Then I log to KDE again then I su in the shell then I do this.

#make installworld

#mergemaster -iU

U will install the new files which were added since the previous version auto in the laptop or there server too.

#reboot

Then I get my FreeBSD kernel and userland up to date

Enjoy it!

Thank you,

Abdullah Ibn Hamad Al-Marri
Arab Portal Network

As some of you already know FreeBSD released it’s newer version of branch 6.x which is FreeBSD 6.2 which is the most stable and best performance release since the release of 6.x branch.
SMP for multi CPUs and cores has been improved with better stability.

Also there is a great new feature for the security got added too.

Security event auditing is now supported in the FreeBSD kernel, and is enabled by the AUDIT kernel configuration option. More information can be found in the audit(4) manual page.

FreeBSD now runs on the Xbox, whose architecture is nearly identical to the i386.

Check FreeBSD 6.2 release notes here.

Also they have upgraded the GCC compiler to 3.4.6, and FreeBSD working in getting GCC 4.x in FreeBSD 7.0 too, which will increase the performance of the apps run on the server as well

And for Desktop users, finally KDE got upgraded to 3.5.4 and 3.5.5 via the ports as well.

My servers got better performance since the upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2 I guess it’s the time for you to upgrade your server, or desktop OS via the cvsup and great chance for new comers to FreeBSD world to enjoy the best free Unix OS in the world for their servers or Desktop/laptops or tablet pc too.

One more thing to mention here, DesktopBSD 1.6 will be released soon which is based on FreeBSD 6.2, now some users testing the release candidate which is based on FreeBSD 6.2

New laptop or desktop users should try it, it has good gui to install with plug and play support which is based on the great real UNIX FreeBSD 6.2

Thank you FreeBSD Commiters for making such great OS for all of us!