How "safe" is 5.2 to use?

[Micheas Herman]

On Tue, 2004-01-13 at 14:02, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
> "David Meier" <meier at logmail.net> writes:
> 
> > I am relatively new to the world of FreeBSD. But first, congrats to the
> > new release! I am somewhat insecure on how trustfully I can use the new
> > release for my intended use (and I hope my questions haven't been posted a
> > zillion times before). Therefore I hope the FreeBSD nuts can advise me
> > whether to go for 4.9 or 5.2.
> 
> Yes.  Um, wait, maybe I'll have more-useful advice after more details.
> 
> > The setup:
> > hardware: DELL PowerEdge 1750 (Dual XEON, 2GB RAM, RAID 1).

        Double check your RAID controler.
        SMP may or may not be production ready.  It was a problem at one
        point. under a certain condition. I don't have any SMP boxes so
        I haven't paid much attention.

> > web server: Apache 2.0, MySQL 4.0, PHP 4.3.4, Perl 5.8
> > mail server: Postfix, Cyrus IMAPd, Cyrus SASL, Amavis-new, SpamAssassin,
> > ClamAV

        Apache 2.0 will like FreeBSD 5.x better, AFAIK I don't think any
        of the other apps will care one way or the other. 

> 
> Okay, it's pretty new and powerful hardware, and the software is all
> fairly widely used.  Should be no big deal.
> 
> > The servers will be used for virtual hosting as a small ISP evironment and
> > housed about 30min from where I work (in case I have to reset them...).
> 
> That's convenient.
> 
> > I don't know how and if the instability risks may affect such a setup of
> > services on the hardware described. Unfortunately, the advisories are kept
> > in pretty general language, however, I know it is hard to predict how it
> > will be running on a particular system. I just don't know FreeBSD well
> > enough to have a 'feel' about it (although I don't rely too much on
> > 'feelings' in the world of computers). Is upgrading to 5.2 comparable to,
> > say, I upgrade from RedHat 9 to RedHat's newest release?
> > 
> > What I like about the 5.x releases is the possibility of taking file
> > system snapshots, for example to back up the mailboxes.
> 
> Okay, so you actually would like features that are specific to 5.x.
> That's a good enough reason to try it; from a user point of view, 5.2
> seems to be roughly comparable to 4.9 in dependability.  If you can
> install and configure the system, 5.2 will probably work well for
> you.  This implies that you can go through a fairly thorough system
> test on your actual hardware before you install the system(s) in their
> permanent location (or at least before you bring them into production
> use).  If you have any trouble that worries you at all, drop back to
> 4.9 and install that.
> 
> How's that?
-- 
Micheas Herman              email: micheas at freep.org
Free Print Shop             web:   http://www.FreePrintShop.org
phone: (415)648-3222        fax:   (415)648-4466