A Testament to Stability and FreeBSD

[Sean Rees]

Hey all,

A few weeks ago, I picked up a server from my parents' house that I
had all but forgotten about. I had logged in periodically to clear out
/var/log and perform internal maintenance tasks, but not much else.
Due to a remodel at my parents' house, this server needed a new home
-- my home.

I thought I'd write a brief note as a sort of testament to the
stability and usability of FreeBSD, especially as it relates to
upgrades.

In December 1998, I installed FreeBSD 3.0-RELEASE on this very same
machine. When I brought the machine home with me, it ran FreeBSD
4.11-STABLE. A few days ago, I bumped it to 5.5-STABLE and just last
night, I rebuilt it's world to 6.2-STABLE. These are all source
upgrades (with the exception of a 6.2-RELEASE binary upgrade to save
time) and _no_ clean installs in the interim. It even runs on the same
hard drive as it did over 8 years ago.

I thought I'd give a big shout out of 'thanks!' to the FreeBSD
community for making this possible. I thought I'd also share a few
items...

[srees at valiant]-~% finger root
Login: root                             Name: Charlie Root
Directory: /root                        Shell: /bin/csh
Last login Mon Jan 25 16:06 1999 (PST) on ttyv0

(I like su)

Some stuff from /usr/bin:
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    66452 Jan 20  2000 ./bison
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    11000 Jun 24  2000 ./btreeop
-r-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    17984 Jan 20  2000 ./captoinfo
-r-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel    49680 Sep 16  1999 ./cc2723
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    21600 Jan 20  2000 ./error
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   197456 Jan 20  2000 ./f2c
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     5140 Jan 20  2000 ./fpr
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     5704 Jan 20  2000 ./fsplit
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     4712 Aug 20  1999 ./g++-2.7.2.3
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    49680 Aug 22  1999 ./gcc-2.7.2.3

As for this box, a P2 300 with 192MB of RAM, I plan on repurposing it
as a router for my home network. This, among other things, was it's
original purpose many years ago while I lived at home and maintained
it. What was once shall be again.

Cheers,
Sean