FreeBSD 5.4: Is it generally unstable?

[Freddie Cash]

On June 8, 2005 03:26 am, Matthias Buelow wrote:
> David Hogan wrote:
> > In my time with the Trustix lists, I don't think I came across a
> > serious kernel issue that wasn't caused by either a lack of a
> > preinstalled driver or a bad stick of ram. Would you say that this
> > holds true for FreeBSD? I

> If that Trustix works for you now well, you'd be careless to migrate
> now. If it works, why change it?
> My experience with the 5.x tree so far is that it's ok for a SOHO or
> private environment but I wouldn't trust it if my money (or job)
> depended on it. Maybe in a year, or two but not now.

We depend on it everyday without problems.  Our mail servers, spam / virus 
filters, firewalls, web servers, proxy servers, and Samba servers all run 
FreeBSD 5.3 and 5.4.  We have servers in each of the secondary schools, 
the admin buildings, and the elementary schools.  Some of these are 
high-end dual-Opteron systems with 4 GB of RAM.  Others are dual-AthlonMP 
systems with 4 GB RAM.  The lowest-end are P2 333MHz systems (firewalls).  
None of the servers are name-brand, top-tier servers, they're all generic 
1U, 2U, and tower systems built by local suppliers to our specifications.

The only problem we've had with FreeBSD 5 is one system running 5.2.1 that 
ran for over a year just fine, but would not complete a buildworld 
(hardware has died and it has been retired, so it's not an issue any 
more).

I trust my job to FreeBSD (even runs on my laptop), and it handles just 
about everything for the school district, right down to storing accounting 
and personnel files.  Works beautifully, for our needs.

-- 
Freddie Cash
fcash at ocis.net