summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
-rw-r--r--release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/early-adopter/article.sgml181
1 files changed, 118 insertions, 63 deletions
diff --git a/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/early-adopter/article.sgml b/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/early-adopter/article.sgml
index d70f79c..aa65b2a 100644
--- a/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/early-adopter/article.sgml
+++ b/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/early-adopter/article.sgml
@@ -16,11 +16,15 @@
<!ENTITY % release PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES Release Specification//EN">
%release;
+
+<!ENTITY release.4x "4.<replaceable>X</replaceable>">
+<!ENTITY release.5x "5.<replaceable>X</replaceable>">
+
]>
<article>
<articleinfo>
- <title>Early Adopter's Guide to &os; 5.0-RELEASE</title>
+ <title>Early Adopter's Guide to &os; &release.current;</title>
<authorgroup>
<corpauthor>The &os; Release Engineering Team</corpauthor>
@@ -34,35 +38,50 @@
<holder role="mailto:re@FreeBSD.org">The &os; Release
Engineering Team</holder>
</copyright>
+
+ <abstract>
+ <para>This article describes the status of &os;
+ &release.current;, from the standpoint of users who may be new
+ to the &release.5x; series of releases or to &os; in general.
+ It presents some background information on release
+ engineering, some highlights of new features, and some
+ possible drawbacks that might be faced by early adopters. It
+ also contains some of the future release engineering plans for
+ the 4-STABLE development branch and some tips on upgrading
+ existing systems.</para>
+ </abstract>
</articleinfo>
<sect1 id="intro">
<title>Introduction</title>
- <para>&os; 5.0 marks the first new major version of &os; in
+ <para>&os; &release.5x; marks the first new major version of &os; in
over two years. Besides a number of new features, it also
contains a number of major developments in the underlying system
architecture.
Along with these advances, however, comes a system that
incorporates a tremendous amount of new and not-widely-tested
code. Compared to the existing line of
- 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable> releases, 5.0 may have regressions
+ &release.4x; releases, the first few &release.5x; releases
+ may have regressions
in areas of stability, performance, and occasionally
functionality.</para>
- <para>For these reasons, the &a.re; does <emphasis>not</emphasis>
- encourage users to blindly update from older &os; releases to
- 5.0. Specifically, for more conservative users, we recommend
- running 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable> releases (such as
+ <para>For these reasons, the &a.re; specifically
+ discourages users from updating from older &os; releases to
+ &release.current; unless they are aware of (and prepared to deal
+ with) possible regressions in the newer releases.
+ Specifically, for more conservative users, we recommend
+ running &release.4x; releases (such as
4.8-RELEASE) for the near-term
future. We feel that such users are probably best served by
- upgrading to 5.<replaceable>X</replaceable> only after a
+ upgrading to &release.5x; only after a
5-STABLE development branch has been created; this may be around
- the time of 5.1-RELEASE or 5.2-RELEASE.</para>
+ the time of 5.2-RELEASE.</para>
- <para>(&os; 5.0 suffers from what has been described as a
+ <para>(&os; &release.5x; suffers from what has been described as a
<quote>chicken and egg</quote> problem. The entire project has
- a goal of producing a 5.0-RELEASE that is as stable and reliable
+ a goal of producing releases that are as stable and reliable
as possible. This stability and reliability requires widespread
testing, particularly of the system's newer features. However,
getting a large number of users to test the system, in a
@@ -70,14 +89,14 @@
release first!)</para>
<para>This article describes some of the issues involved in
- installing and running &os; 5.0-RELEASE. We begin with a
+ installing and running &os; &release.current;. We begin with a
brief overview of the &os; release process. We then present
- some of the more noteworthy new features in &os; 5.0, along
+ some of the more noteworthy new features in &os; &release.current;, along
with some areas that may prove troublesome for unwary users.
For those users choosing to remain with 4-STABLE-based releases,
we give some of the short- to medium-term plans for this
development branch. Finally, we present some notes on upgrading
- existing 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable> systems to 5.0.</para>
+ existing &release.4x; systems to &release.current;.</para>
</sect1>
@@ -98,12 +117,12 @@
these branches after some amount of testing in CURRENT. At the
moment, only one STABLE branch is under active development; this
branch is referred to as <quote>4-STABLE</quote>, and all of the
- &os; 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable> releases were based on
+ &os; &release.4x; releases were based on
it. This branch has the tag <literal>RELENG_4</literal> in the
CVS repository.</para>
- <para>&os; 5.0 will be based on the CURRENT branch. This
- will be the first release from this branch in over two years (the
+ <para>&os; 5.0 and 5.1 are based on the CURRENT branch. These
+ are the first releases from this branch in over two years (the
last was &os; 4.0, in March 2000).</para>
<para>At some point after the release of &os; 5.0, a
@@ -112,31 +131,37 @@
The past two stable branches (3-STABLE and 4-STABLE) were
created immediately after their respective <quote>dot-oh</quote>
releases (3.0 and 4.0, respectively). In hindsight, this
- practice did not give sufficient time for either CURRENT or the new
- STABLE branches to stabilize after the new branches were
- created.</para>
+ practice did not give sufficient time for either CURRENT
+ to stabilize before the new branches were
+ created. This in turn resulted in wasted effort porting bug
+ fixes between branches, as well as some architectural changes
+ that could not be ported between branches at all.</para>
<para>Therefore, the release engineering team will only create the
- 5-STABLE branch in the CVS repository after they have found a
+ 5-STABLE branch in the CVS repository after we have found a
relatively stable state to use as its basis. It is likely that
there will be
- multiple releases in the 5.<replaceable>X</replaceable> series
+ multiple releases in the &release.5x; series
before this happens; we estimate
that the 5-STABLE branch will be created sometime after
- 5.1-RELEASE or 5.2-RELEASE.</para>
+ 5.2-RELEASE.</para>
<para>More information on &os; release engineering processes can be found
on the <ulink
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/index.html">Release
- Engineering Web pages</ulink> and in the &os; <ulink url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/releng/index.html">Release
- Engineering</ulink> article.</para>
+ Engineering Web pages</ulink> and in the <ulink
+ url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/releng/index.html"><quote>&os; Release
+ Engineering</quote></ulink> article. Specific issues for the upcoming
+ 5-STABLE development branch can be found in <ulink
+ url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/5-roadmap/index.html"><quote>The
+ Roadmap for 5-STABLE</quote></ulink>.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="new">
<title>New Features</title>
- <para>A large attraction of &os; 5.0 is a number of new
+ <para>A large attraction of &os; &release.5x; is a number of new
features. These new features and functionality generally involve
large architectural changes that were not feasible to port back to
the &os; 4-STABLE development branch. (By contrast, many
@@ -149,13 +174,15 @@
<para>SMPng: The <quote>next generation</quote> support for
SMP machines (work in progress). There is now partial
support for multiple processors to be running in the kernel
- at the same time.</para>
+ at the same time. This work is ongoing.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>KSE: Kernel Scheduled Entities allow a single process
to have multiple kernel-level threads, similar to Scheduler
- Activations.</para>
+ Activations. The (experimental) <filename>libkse</filename>
+ and <filename>libthr</filename> libraries make this
+ feature available to multi-threaded userland programs.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
@@ -166,7 +193,7 @@
<listitem>
<para>GCC: The compiler toolchain is now based on GCC
- 3.2.1, rather than GCC
+ 3.2.2, rather than GCC
2.95.<replaceable>X</replaceable>.</para>
</listitem>
@@ -190,7 +217,9 @@
<listitem>
<para>UFS2: A new UFS2 on-disk format has been added, which
supports extended per-file attributes and larger file
- sizes.</para>
+ sizes. UFS2 is now the default format for &man.newfs.8;.
+ On all platforms except for pc98, filesystems created from
+ within &man.sysinstall.8; will use UFS2 by default.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
@@ -200,14 +229,14 @@
</itemizedlist>
<para>A more comprehensive list of new features can be found in
- the release notes for &os; 5.0.</para>
+ the release notes for &os; &release.prev; and &os; &release.current;.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="drawbacks">
<title>Drawbacks to Early Adoption</title>
- <para>Along with the new features of &os; 5.0 come some areas
+ <para>Along with the new features of &os; &release.5x; come some areas
that can cause problems, or at least can lead to unexpected
behavior. Generally, these come from the fact that a number of
features are works-in-progress. A partial list of these
@@ -217,7 +246,9 @@
<listitem>
<para>A number of features are not yet finished. Examples
- from the feature list above include SMPng and KSE.</para>
+ from the feature list above include SMPng and KSE. While
+ suitable for testing and experimentation, these features may
+ not be ready for production use.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
@@ -238,6 +269,14 @@
</listitem>
<listitem>
+ <para>Some parts of the &os; base system have fallen into a
+ state of disrepair due to a lack of users and maintainers.
+ These have been removed. Specific examples include the
+ generation of a.out-style executables, XNS networking
+ support, and the X-10 controller driver.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
<para>A number of ports and packages do not build or do not
run correctly under &os; 5.0, whereas they did under &os;
4-STABLE. Generally these problems are caused by compiler
@@ -245,8 +284,7 @@
</listitem>
<listitem>
- <para>Because &os; 5.0 is the first release from the
- CURRENT branch in over two years, many of its features are
+ <para>Many &os; &release.5x; features are
seeing wide exposure for the first time. Many of these
features (such as SMPng) have broad impacts on the
kernel.</para>
@@ -264,7 +302,7 @@
branch after a <quote>settling time</quote> in -CURRENT.
&os; 5.0 does not have the stabilizing influence of a
-STABLE branch. (It is likely that the 5-STABLE development
- branch will be created sometime after 5.1-RELEASE or
+ branch will be created sometime after
5.2-RELEASE.)</para>
</listitem>
@@ -273,7 +311,7 @@
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html">Handbook</ulink>
and <ulink
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/index.html">FAQ</ulink>)
- may not reflect changes recently made to &os; 5.0.</para>
+ may not reflect changes recently made to &os; &release.5x;.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
@@ -281,7 +319,7 @@
<para>Because a number of these drawbacks affect system stability, the
release engineering team recommends that more conservative sites
and users stick to releases based on the 4-STABLE branch until
- the 5.<replaceable>X</replaceable> series is more polished.</para>
+ the &release.5x; series is more polished.</para>
</sect1>
@@ -289,27 +327,26 @@
<title>Plans for the 4-STABLE Branch</title>
<para>The release of &os; 5.0 does not mean the end of the
- 4-STABLE branch. There will most likely be at least one more release on
+ 4-STABLE branch. Indeed, &os; 4.8 was released two months after
+ 5.0, in April 2003. There will most likely be at least one more release on
this branch, namely 4.9-RELEASE, currently scheduled for summer
- 2003.</para>
-
- <para>As of this writing, the release engineering team has no
- definite plans for future releases (past 4.8) on the 4-STABLE
- branch. However, a 4.9-RELEASE or even a 4.10-RELEASE are
- likely possibilities. Any future releases from this branch will
+ 2003.
+ A 4.10-RELEASE is a likely possibility as well.
+ Future releases from this branch will
depend on several factors. The most important of these
is the existence and stability of the 5-STABLE branch. If
CURRENT is not sufficiently stable to allow the creation of a
5-STABLE branch, this may require and permit more releases from
the 4-STABLE branch. Until the last declared release
- on the 4-STABLE branch, new features may be merged from HEAD at
+ on the 4-STABLE branch, new features may be merged from <literal>HEAD</literal> at
the discretion of developers, subject to existing release
engineering policies.</para>
- <para>To some extent, the release engineering team will take into
+ <para>To some extent, the release engineering team (as well as the
+ developer community as a whole) will take into
account user demand for future 4-STABLE releases. This demand,
however, will need to be balanced with release engineering
- resources (in terms of personnel, computing resources, and mirror
+ resources (particularly developers' time, computing resources, and mirror
archive space).</para>
<para>The &a.security-officer; will continue to support releases
@@ -319,20 +356,20 @@
page</ulink> on the &os; web site. Generally, the two most
recent releases from any branch will be supported with respect
to security advisories and security fixes. At its discretion,
- the team may support other releases.</para>
+ the team may support other releases for specific issues.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="upgrade">
- <title>Notes on Upgrading</title>
+ <title>Notes on Upgrading from &os; &release.4x;</title>
<para>For those users with existing &os; systems, this section
offers a few notes on upgrading a &os;
- 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable> system to
- 5.<replaceable>X</replaceable>. As with any &os; upgrade, it
+ &release.4x; system to
+ &release.5x;. As with any &os; upgrade, it
is crucial to read the release notes and the errata for the
version in question, as well as
- <filename>src/UPDATING</filename> for source upgrades.</para>
+ <filename>src/UPDATING</filename> in the case of source upgrades.</para>
<sect2>
<title>Binary Upgrades</title>
@@ -341,14 +378,16 @@
<quote>backup everything, reformat, reinstall, and restore
everything</quote>. This eliminates problems of incompatible
or obsolete executables or configuration files polluting the
- new system.</para>
+ new system. It allows new filesystems to be created to take
+ advantage of new functionality (most notably, the UFS2
+ defaults).</para>
<para>As of this time, the binary upgrade option in
&man.sysinstall.8; has not been well-tested for
cross-major-version upgrades. Using this feature is not
recommended. In particular, a binary upgrade will leave
behind a number of files that are present in &os;
- 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable> but not in 5.0. These obsolete
+ &release.4x; but not in &release.5x;. These obsolete
files may create some problems.</para>
<para>On the i386 and pc98 platforms, a UserConfig utility
@@ -371,7 +410,7 @@
rather than the stripped-down kernel on the floppy images. In
theory, any system capable of booting the Microsoft Windows NT
4 installation CDROMs should be able to cope with the &os;
- 5.0 CDROMs.</para>
+ &release.5x; CDROMs.</para>
</sect2>
@@ -402,8 +441,8 @@
users will not notice this change.</para>
<para>It is generally possible to run old
- 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable> executables under
- 5.<replaceable>X</replaceable>, but this requires the
+ &release.4x; executables under
+ &release.5x;, but this requires the
<filename>compat4x</filename> distribution to be installed.
Thus, using old ports <emphasis>may</emphasis> be
possible.</para>
@@ -417,22 +456,38 @@
(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.
- FreeBSD 5.X uses a device filesystem. For more information,
+ <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>
- </sect2>
+ <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; 5.0 contains a number of new and exciting
+ <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 5.<replaceable>X</replaceable>
+ 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>
OpenPOWER on IntegriCloud