RE: Staying *really stable* in FreeBSD
FreeBSD Admin [EMAIL PROTECTED] types: I haven't posting anything in some time, so I'm making up for it now with this tome. 8-) It says nothing important and means nothing, so skip as you like. You do have some very good points, and some of them are being addressed already. Don't think that the computer industry doesn't look at what goes on at the FreeBSD jamboree. FreeBSD could be the next Linux, (stop booing) in terms of gaining a much larger industry following since we all know it totally trashes Linux. But and it's a big BUT, the industry PERCEPTION of the FreeBSD community, it's response to security problems, it's ability to recognize problems with stability, and reliability, seems to matter more than what the reality is. This is all very true, but you have to consider what the goal of the project - or rather, the people working on it - is. While I don't speak for them, as far as I'm concerned getting lots of people to use FreeBSD is less important than continuing to provide a quality computing platform. One of the advantages of open source is that the developers can ignore the popularity contest of the market, and concentrate on quality. Not that I wouldn't like FreeBSD to be the most popular platform around, but if it has to become Windows - or even Linux - to do so, it clearly isn't worth it. I've seen enough tools go sour in pursuit of market share that I'd rather not see a single change that sacrifices quality for market share. I use and maintain AIX and HP-UX systems. I very much love FreeBSD --- that is, except for this maintenance nightmare. Because it's so hard to pinpoint an exact microsecond in time when STABLE is really almost/nearly/ stable, I'm still running a 2.2.8 system. Since there's also no decent way to upgrade, I've been waiting for the time to built a new system and switch over. Except, that time never seems to come. I finally stopped my subscription to the CD. I have a stack of them from 2.2.5 all the way up to 3.4 (3.5?). Note that the section heading of the handbook is The Cutting Edge. I don't track current on anything in any kind of production, and I don't track stable on anything even remotely critical. I've maintained AIX systems, but SunOS, Solaris and Ultrix are what I normally deal with. The process of upgrading those systems is no easier than ugprading a FreeBSD system that's through the subscriptions. FreeBSD doesn't have anything like the binary patches available for those systems, and I've complained about that lack myself. Then again, none of them have anything like tracking stable - much less current - and I miss that when dealing with those systems. I started once before with the 3.x branch, building another system. Oops. Suddenly all the device and partition and slice names changed. I just didn't have a whole weekend to devote to this, so it got abandoned. There's a reason for such things. If you really want, I can explain it. I will note that Solaris does - well, once did, as they fixed it - worse. It renumbered the disk drives after an upgrade, which left one system trying to mount a raw Ingres partition as /usr. I need a relatively painless way to keep my system current with vital security patches, and fix broken subsystems, without having a Ph.D. in FreeBSD, or needing to spend 20 hours of my weekend figuring out what to do. I agree, that would be really nice. I do it by tracking stable on a production machine that's not critical. I'm very careful about it - which means it takes time. Mission critical machines generally run softare off the CDs. I watch the security list, and when a bug shows up in software that they are running, I'll skip updating the production system tracking stable, and ugprade the effected machines from the source tree that machine has been running for at least a week. With 4.3, there's a new branch to track - RELENG_4_3 - that contains nothing but security fixes. I'm looking forward to giving it a try. There are apparently also binary patches built from RELENG_4_3, which I may well use instead. How can I patch my system from a STABLE branch that doesn't have specific builds that I can choose from? My druthers would be to stay back a few weeks and then pick up something that's had the problems know up to that time, worked out. Sort of like doing a bi-weekly code freeze and new build. But I think that means propagating the fixes to the fixes back to each build along with other problems. There must be a way something like this could be done to increase the stability and reliability of the product. That's pretty much what RELENG_4_3 addresses. It doesn't make the job of upgrading from one RELEASE to another any easier; after all, you'll be upgrading from RELEASE X.Y + bug fixes - whether they are applied as binary patches or as a source build - to RELEASE X.(Y+1) in either case. Without making it insanely difficult for hundreds of wonderful volunteers, shirley (8-)
Printer problems
I have a HP Deskjet 932C. I was having problems with printing out large douments - right in the middle of the print job the job would stop. lpq would complain that the printer was offline. The only fix I found was to reboot the computer. I fixed the problem by switching to using polling mode (using lptcontrol). Is this a known bug with the lpt drivers? -- Stephen Montgomery-Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.math.missouri.edu/~stephen To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-stable in the body of the message
Re: Staying *really stable* in FreeBSD
On Sun, Jun 24, 2001 at 02:45:24AM +0200, Michael Nottebrock wrote: snip You make some very good points. For you, like 99% of Linux users, you are better off never attempting to cvsup or to track stable. [...] I just like to say that my experience with tracking stable is quite positive. I installed FreeBSD 4.2-Release with the boot floppies and a snip openssh clients like the 2.9pl1 in Linux Mandrake) doing a Release-2-Stable and a Stable-2-Stable upgrade from source has been a breeze, thanks to the guidance of /usr/src/UPDATING and the FreeBSD Handbook (and the FAQ for explaining kern_securelevel and it's impact on file flags). All this updating from source at least never left me without a root filesystem when booting a new kernel (as did Linux Mandrake 7.2 I've never had a problem tracking and building stable resulting in an unbootable or generally unusable system. There was the one and only time I tried making installworld in the recommended way, via single-user init level and the system spontaneously rebooted. But, otherwise, no problems at all. Even for a period of time when I was cvsuping and making the world every day... which ended immediately after I got that month's electricity bill. Good god damn, I'm obscenely lucky, aren't I. Wait a minute... I SEE NO SUPER MODEL SEX KITTEN ON MY BED!@#$ It must be FreeBSD, not my luck. snip kernel). IMHO, the FreeBSD stable sourcetree and also the ports packages collection are in such a good shape that they don't need to fear any comparison with rpm or deb based Linux distributions. Hey, even Windows NT When a port doesn't work for me, I cvsup the ports tree and it's fixed or someone on stable has said they're fixing the problem presently and it's fine the next day. It's all a wonderful dream. Better than kittens or ice cream or puppies or rainbows. 2000 boxen have been reported to break after installing a Service Pack, after all. Windows service packs are on the same level as medieval alchemy. 600 years from now, science will find a way to make windows secure and stable. Not only that, but cloning will be perfected and posterity won't be left with the horrible prospect of a world without Carrot Top and Rob Schneider. snip -- disclaimer: vodka. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-stable in the body of the message
Re: Printer problems
--- Stephen Montgomery-Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a HP Deskjet 932C. I was having problems with printing out large douments - right in the middle of the print job the job would stop. lpq would complain that the printer was offline. The only fix I found was to reboot the computer. What mode is your parallel port in? You might want to try experimenting with the various PPT modes, ECP, ECP/EPP, and normal. With my printer, I was having problems with the PPT mode set to ECP/EPP and EPP, but the problems went away when I set the mode to either ECP or normal. Actually, I don't think this is the case with your printer, but I thought I would give it a shot. I think it's a thing with the HP printers that they seem to not work very well unless you use polling. __ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-stable in the body of the message
Re: Staying *really stable* in FreeBSD
On Sun, 24 Jun 2001 12:00:59 +1200 Juha Saarinen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: JS :: The tracking of stable is not for everyone. Noone *needs* to track JS :: stable. JS JS Well, that isn't what the Handbook says: JS JS 19.2.2.2. Who needs FreeBSD-STABLE? JS If you are a commercial user or someone who puts maximum stability of JS their FreeBSD system before all other concerns, you should consider Emphasis on this word _ JS Reading that para (plus the ones before that), effectively tells you JS that -STABLE is what you should use for err maximum stability. You JS get the bugfixes and security fixes that aren't in -RELEASE. Reading further will show that this comes with an *inevitable* price namely that you have to read -stable and be sensible about it. JS So... you need to track -STABLE, right? JS :: the peculiar make used by FreeBSD. What we need is an apt-get-like JS :: upgrade path for security fixes that solves the problem of people The new security fix only branch should serve this need nicely. Now -stable is only needed for those who want/need to track bug fixes and new features. -- Directable Mirrors - A Better Way To Focus The Sun http://www.best.com/~sohara To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-stable in the body of the message
