FreeBSD Version recommend for OLD machine

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:29:13 -0600, Jorge Biquez <jbiquez at icsmx.com> wrote:
> It won't do anything else but a dns slave for maybe 100 domains, mail 
> and squirrel for 10 domain, not more than 100 users with very low 
> volume. That's all.
> 
> Can you give me your opinions on what would you?
> 
> - To re-install the version that it used to has from zero and let it 
> work again for some other years.
> 
> - Try a new version (maybe it is more secure or faster) and if 
> so..... which one?
> (in all these years even when the machine is on the Internet and LOT 
> of people has tried to hacked it daily, in all these years we have 
> never had a problem.)
> 
> Thanks in advance for your advice.

You won't encounter problems running the latest FreeBSD. This
OS, I may emphasize this, does run FASTER and BETTER with
each release on the SAME hardware.

Sadly, this doesn't always apply for application software,
which tends to "benefit" from bloat.

But as you said you don't want a workstation, but a server,
you sould install FreeBSD 8 and incorporate the security
updates, e. g. via freebsd-update. So you can be sure to
have a secure system all the time. DNS and squirrel don't
seem to bring in any problems, from my opinion.

So, my advice would be:
1. Get all your data from the machine.
2. Install FreeBSD 8 from scratch. This gives you the chance
   to possible re-partition, if you need to.
3. Update to the latest security patchlevel.
4. Update your ports collection.
5. Install the programs you need, or use "pkg_add -r", which
   may be the better solution if you have an "old" system;
   in this case, step 4 can be omitted.
6. Configure your services.
7. Re-import your data, configure everything properly.
8. Give it a test run.
9. Yay! You did it! =^_^=



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...