Questions about FreeBSD Versions

[Matthew Seaman]

On Tue, Sep 09, 2003 at 10:49:46AM -0700, Leonard, Harry wrote:
> This email is about:  Which version of FreeBSD should I be using for
> production?  I need to set up an in-house web server for our website and
> another box for my few intranet applications.  In the near future I might
> have the opportunity to create a firewall box and I really need to get on
> top of things.  Today, I'll go back to FreeBSD 5.0 (which I've had the most
> success with) and read the errata over again and make sure there's nothing
> that I'm missing.  I'd appreciate it if you could give me a stamp of
> approval on which version I can/should use for my small production needs.
> Sorry, if I've gotten a little windy with my explanation but I wanted to
> give you some background.  I also Thank You for reading this email and for
> any help that you can provide me in this matter.  Please let me know what
> you think?

Definitely your first choice should be 4.8-RELEASE on a production
system.  The only exceptions are when you need to support hardware
only covered by 5.x or you need some software capabilities, like
nss_ldap/pam_ldap only available on 5.x.  

"Production" in general means that it's the server that carries your
publically visible web presence and not having it running 24x7 is
going to cost you money or prestige.

having said that, a version from the RELENG_4 branch (ie. at the
moment FreeBSD 4.9-PRERELEASE) will be right up in the same ballpark
as regards stability and reliability as one of the -RELEASE versions
-- it's just that RELENG_4, being a development branch, doesn't
absolutely guarrantee that, and it's a moving target: changes and
updates are made to RELENG_4 every day, and if you're trying to run a
site really professionally, you're going to give yourself a much
higher burden of testing by tracking RELENG_4.

Now, generally the only other option would be 5-CURRENT (which is the
HEAD branch in cvs).  That's definitely developers only territory, not
guarranteed to work correctly or even boot up at any particular point
in time.  Certainly not suitable for running a webserver on.

However, due to the particular circumstances at the moment, the gap in
functionality between 4.x and 5.x is particularly big, and the 4.x
branch has had a much longer life than initially expected (compare to
the 3.x branch which only reached 3.5-RELEASE), so it was felt that
there should be some early releases from the 5.x branch to promote
testing on a wider range of equipment.  5.1 is still a "New
Technology" release, but many people are running it quite happily on
their desktops -- particularly portables for which it has much
improved support.  Even so, it's not advised to run it on a server
system, especially if you are adverse to being paged at 3.00am to come
and sort out what broke.

See http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.1R/early-adopter.html for an
article discussing who might consider running what version.

As for your problems with the installer, this mailing list can
certainly help you out.  Try searching the list archives for someone
else who has had similar problems -- either at lists.freebsd.org for
stuff in about the last three or four months or at

    http://www.freebsd.org/search/search.html#mailinglists

or there's a new site with a particularly good (IMHO) search interface at

    http://freebsd.rambler.ru/

Then there's Google (of course), and the http://www.freebsdforums.org/
message board system.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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