Overall "feel" for the stability of FreeBSD 5

[Steve Sizemore]

On Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 10:30:09AM -0500, Bill Moran wrote:
> I'm considering setting up a FreeBSD 5 machine as a dedicated
> backup/archive computer on a network I administer.
> 
> I'm curious to hear some opinions on how wise this is.  I know
> that 5 is still in a -CURRENT status and I've seen (and repeated)
> the warnings that it's not really production quality yet.
> 
> So I'm curious as to a number of facets of its capibilities:
> 1) With the current developmet effort ... does it seem like 5.1
>    will be -STABLE ... or do folks feel that a -STABLE brand
>    is further off (5.2?)
> 2) For a dedicated backup server, that can tolerate the
>    performance problems that folks have been reporting, and
>    won't upset the entire office if it panics on occasion, is 5
>    good enough at this point?

I've been running RELENG_5_0 on a production server since January, and
it's working fine.  (It's our backup server - amanda - among other
things.) It wasn't my first choice; I really wanted to run RELENG_4_7,
but that didn't support the RAID controller. At this point, I could
downgrade to 4.8, but there are a couple of other features I'd have to
give up. Even though it makes me nervous to run a version not on the
secure branch, I'm going to stick with it until there is a stable
branch, or until I run into a problem.  So far, I have not.
(Performance hasn't been an issue for me.) I haven't had a single
panic.

Steve
-- 
Steve Sizemore <steve at ls.berkeley.edu>, (510) 642-8570
Unix System Manager
    Dept. of Mathematics and College of Letters and Science
    University of California, Berkeley