As expected, the FreeBSD 5.2.1-RC update is now available either by CVS’upping your sources or by downloading an ISO image from the FTP mirrors. This comes out 20 days after the 5.2.0 release and brings bug fixes mainly for mksnap_ffs, NFSv4, KUser, GEOM and ATA drivers, and also IPsec. It does not load by default the new high-performance ULE scheduler (manual kernel recompile required).
FreeBSD 5.2.1 RC Available
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Just because it’s on a _few_ ftp sites, doesn’t mean it’s released. Until it shows up on [email protected], it’s not official.
Premature announcements like this one swamp the FTP servers before the ISOs are distributed out, making getting the source slower for -everyone-.
Not to mention that it’s a release candidate, not the final release. (Sorry about the second message — I didn’t see a place to edit my first one)
If you put it on a public FTP server, don’t complain when people download it.
If they wanted to safely distribute it to mirrors, they should have put some sort of password protection, and only the main mirrors had the password.
It’s a -RC, not the final one!
dave
> If you put it on a public FTP server, don’t complain when people download it.
1. It is not a release, but Release Candidate (you can see it from it’s name)
2. If I put on my public ftp server (I’m running one of official FreeBSD mirrors) files called 6.0-RELEASE-i386-disc[1234].iso, it doesn’t mean it is actually -RELEASE.
I’d suppose Eugenia to subscribe to [email protected] mailing list.
Who’s complaining?
Stating a fact can hardly be called a complaint.
Announcing a Release Candidate is not something to bark about, guys. This is a news site, and the RC is news–though not the news some of you guys were waiting for, apparently. I’m sorry to hear the bickering.
It’s good to see progress on the FreeBSD team’s end. Thank you, gregg and Eugenia for the news!
Well the news has only said it is AVAILABLE! didn’t say IT is released or announced on the mailing-list. Come on, guys. What is so wrong to post a news on a news site before the official anouncement if it’s in fact really available now? This is a news site!!!
Anyway, it is pleasure to know that 5.2.1 release is getting close. I hope to try out ULE and KSE soon to see the improvements over the current default scheduler. I’m currently running cvsup-ed 5.2-release system with custom kernel, and I’m already enjoying the speed and the stability of FreeBSD tho.. Isn’t it going to be much faster and more stable?
It’s fun!!
What is so wrong to post a news on a news site before the official anouncement if it’s in fact really available now? This is a news site!!!
Because some sites have previously been premature in their announcements of FreeBSD releases, causing individuals to install bad/buggy code. You see, no one can really say if it’s “in fact really available now” except for the FreeBSD release team. There’s no guarantee that what’s on the FTP servers is, in fact 5.2.1-RC until they say so.
Adam
Adam
ULE is the new scheduler , but what is KSE ?
does any one know when KDE3.2 will be officially released? in source and for BSD specifically
i removed my old BSD, so im also eagerly waiting to get the latest one, especially if it has a GUI friendly scheduler;
cheers
ram
KSE is the new thread library.
You know there have been major issues when they add a third version number to a release.
ULE is the new scheduler , but what is KSE ?
“Kernel Scheduler Entities (KSE), is a kernel-supported threading system similar in design to Scheduler Activations [Anderson, et. al.]. It strikes a balance between user-level (1:N) and kernel-level (1:1) threading models, giving most of the advantages of both, and few of the disadvantages of either.” – http://www.freebsd.org/kse/
One thing, there are still bugs and quirks. Most of the time, you should notice an improvement, however, there are still some issues.
does any one know when KDE3.2 will be officially released? in source and for BSD specifically
I would say it should almost be immediately, HOWEVER, I would wait for a couple of days after the hords of people are stung and subsequently a couple days after the initial release, some patches will be issued and put on the FreeBSD cvs to fix those issues.
i removed my old BSD, so im also eagerly waiting to get the latest one, especially if it has a GUI friendly scheduler;
Well, it should be nicer for interactive stuff, however, one has to take into account that ULE is still in the fine tuning phase. Unless you’re willing to take risks, I would say to stick with FreeBSD 4.9 until either stable or 5.4/5.5 is released.
KSE stands for Kernel Scheduler Entities (so something). It basically means that FreeBSD 5.x is a multithreaded kernel. Originally, BSD was a single threaded operating system were basic scheduling entity was process now it is a thread.
KSE and ULE should become stable by 5.3 release
What desktop(s)if any do the FreeBSD ISOs come with?
it comes with wmaker, gnome, kde, afterstep, the default X windows manager and u can find every other /usr/ports/X11-wm (i think)
KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker and probably xfce4, fluxbox and blackbox. Maybe few more.
If you look, CaptainPinko was asking what it *comes* with. On the ISO, there’s couple a lightweight DEs: windowmaker, twm, and maybe afterstep. The heavy choice is KDE. If you want Gnome, you’ll either have to compile from source or pkg_add -r gnome, which will pull the gnome packages from the ftp servers.
If you want Gnome, you’ll either have to compile from source or pkg_add -r gnome, which will pull the gnome packages from the ftp servers.
What are you talking about ? Last time I checked (FreeBSD 5.2RC2) gnome was included on the cd.
I’m using ULE and it works fine. Performance increase is quite visible. I have a question though – how should I go about changing the threading library to KSE? Currently, I used /etc/libmap.conf, but KDE (and X) won’t start. Do I need to recompile my ports tree? I searched google for issues, but results were confusing. Do I need something in rc.conf as well? I would be glad if someone could write a step by step howto.
Also, what about nvidia-drivers? Would they work with libkse?
To use it, you only need the entries in libmap.conf – nothing else.
KSE does not work if you use the nvidia drivers. Basically, nVidia need to recompile their driver to make it work (and has been asked to do this several times in the last months…).
If you’re _not_ using the nVidia drivers, and you still can’t start X or KDE using KSE, watch your kernel log for messages like ‘Warning: PID x used static ldt allocation’ or something like that. Recompile the application that has PID x to fix this (you should not see this message on a fresh 5.2 system, of course, only if you have ports that were compiled on an earlier FreeBSD version).
I note again, that if you use the nvidia drivers, you _will_ see these messages and there will be nothing you can do about it, so you won’t be able to run with KSE & nvidia until nvidia releases a new driver.
‘m using ULE and it works fine. Performance increase is quite visible. I have a question though – how should I go about changing the threading library to KSE? Currently, I used /etc/libmap.conf, but KDE (and X) won’t start. Do I need to recompile my ports tree?
You don’t need to recompile the ports — that’s why libmap.conf was proposed. I am also using ULE and KSE (in 5.2.1 RC) without problems in either of them. I have the following in my /etc/libmap.conf (so that I use libkse for *all* threaded applications):
libc_r.so.5 libkse.so.1
libc_r.so libkse.so
So when I do ‘ldd /usr/X11R6/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin’ I get the following:
…
libc_r.so.5 => /usr/lib/libkse.so.1 (0x28134000)
…
and if i run mozilla and issue a ‘top -H’ i see mozilla running with 4 threads.
So check the manpage (‘man libmap.conf’) to see if you have made some errors in your libmap.conf, e.g. check that you map libc_r.so and not libc.so.
HTH
Stelios