Two Options: which to choose?

[Matt Juszczak]

Hi all,

Removing IPF for 5.4-STABLE seems to have made the boxes stable.  I 
switched all the firewalls to PF and they haven't crashed since, its been 
about 3 days now... (before they were crashing every 12 hours).

Here are my worries:

1)  If I were to put this machine into production, it could crash at any 
time for another reason... or maybe the switch to PF hasn't actually 
stabalized it, and its just playing games with me.

2)  If it crashes again, I might lose some responsibilities at work due to 
trust and/or "inabilities".

So here's the thing .... 5.4-STABLE is a great OS, I run it on other 
single processor machines... but obviously it doesn't seem to like the 
three servers I have it setup on at work that keep crashing (or atleast 
kept crashing until recently).

Therefore, part of me is thinking of switching back to either 4.11 or to 
OBSD 3.7.  Problem is, this switch wouldn't be temporary, it would have to 
be permanant.  I couldn't set things up now and then move them again a 
month from now.  4.11-STABLE is stable, but it would have to be our 
solution for at least one or two years...

So my debate is whether to choose FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE which I know is 
stable, but isn't actively developed and/or patched (except for security 
patches), or choose something like OBSD 3.7 which I know is stable and is 
also actively developed ... but then again, maybe OpenBSD will have 
trouble with these three servers too, knowing my luck.

What's everyone's opinion?  I've had replies to previous posts telling me 
to go back to 4.11 "temporarily", or to "at least get something stable 
while you work on something new", but ... I'd like to do this all in one 
shot.....

PS: I don't mind TESTING stability ... as long as the box isn't crashing, 
I can hold off a few weeks for stability testing before i do a switch 
over.  I'm not looking to do a psycho load-it, install-it, configure-it, 
switch-it in 24 hours thing....

Regards,

Matt