Last Question On Which Release Is Best For Production

[Simon Barner]

Michael G. Goodell wrote:
> My question is this: I currently run 5.1 (uname -a yields: 5.1-RELEASE-p17)
> and I read at the page http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.html it states
> that 5.1 is Frozen and also states (not officially supported) - Does this
> mean that I am using a release that is not supported at all any longer and I
> should upgrade to 5.3 or will my 5.1 release still have security patches and
> such applied to it and eventually become production worthy.

I'd say a two-fold "no". First, it's no longer a security branch, see
e.g. here  http://www.freebsd.org/security/#adv , and 5.1 is
definitively not production worthy. Lot's of improvements (regarding
stability, performance and features) went into FreeBSD 5 since then.

Just have a look at the freebsd-current mailing list archive, and see
how busy they are, and given the fact that 5.1 was released over one
year ago, you can imagine what has changed since then.

> Am I just
> missing out on functionality by sticking with 5.1 and not moving up to 5.3?
> Moreover, *if* I choose to move to 5.3 (when it is ready for prime time) can
> I change my cvsupfile and then rebuild my kernel and world to the new 5.3
> release?

Yes, but you should also rebuild all of your ports, for the following
reasons:
 - the default threading libs changed
 - a new version of gcc was imported (bringing an (binary) incompatible c++
   mangeling scheme)

You might also upgrade to FreeBSD 5.3-BETA6 now, which already is in a
very good condition, and update to 5.3-RELEASE as soon as it's released
(presumably on 17 October).

HTH,
 Simon
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