Firefox or what?

[hw]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2019 14:51:17 +0200
Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Aug 2019 12:37:05 +0200, hw wrote:
> > On Wed, 14 Aug 2019 13:21:18 +0200
> > Andrea Venturoli <ml at netfence.it> wrote:
> > 
> > > On 8/13/19 11:34 PM, hw wrote:
> > > 
> > > > After all this, I wouldn't be surprised if FreeBSD-NFS is incompatible
> > > > with Centos-NFS.
> > > 
> > > Sorry, but you didn't say that in your first post.
> > 
> > It was neither relevant, nor known in the first post.  If Firefox
> > generally doesn't work with FreeBSD, that would have been an
> > explanation, and that was what I wanted to know.  Seeing that so many
> > things are missing from the version FreeBSD uses is not exactly
> > encouraging.
> 
> What do you consider "missing from FreeBSD's Firefox version"?
> Am I reading this correctly?

I'm referring to the list of missing things that is being displayed
when you install the package.

> Given that the FreeBSD version of Firefox version is essentially
> the Linux version of Firefox _ported_ to FreeBSD, I cannot imagine
> things are "missing" - except maybe those that heavily rely on
> Linux mechanisms that don't exist on FreeBSD, but then, the
> "Windows" version of Firefox would miss them, too.

It's still not encouraging.

> > That NFS doesn't work right was unexpected and unknown, and I was
> > assuming that NFS is compatible with NFS since anything else doesn't
> > make sense.
> 
> As others have confirmed their NFS settings are working fully
> as expected, you should review your configuration. You already
> could confirm that it works among Linux systems, if I remember
> correctly. So FreeBSD is "the new part" here. It still leaves
> the possibility (!) that "Linux NFS" is broken in a way that
> it only works with Linux, and not entirely as expected with
> non-Linux systems such as FreeBSD.

That is certainly a possibility.  It's not relevant, though.

> I've been running NFS setups with Linux, BSD, and Solaris, but
> that way mamy years ago. Maybe things have disimproved since ... ;-)
> 
> 
> 
> > > Again, this might be a problem with FreeBSD, a problem in CentOS, a 
> > > problem with how you configured them...
> > > We cannot tell if you don't provide info.
> > > Also, I'd be suprised if this only affected FireFox (which was the 
> > > original subject), as several other programs wouldn't work then...
> > 
> > Firefox was the one I tried to get to work; if others didn't work
> > either, I didn't get so far as to find it out other than a while ago
> > when it turned out that NFS in FreeBSD sucks because it's incapable of
> > exporting directories with the permissions as required.
> 
> Could that be a configuration problem?

No, it is a feature.  There is even a bug report about it.

> Again, it would help if you could quickly describe your setup.

There is no way to describe it quickly.  Multiple servers, PXE boot
setups, VLANs and switches from different manufacturers are involved.

> [...]
> > > Everything here is FreeBSD based.
> > 
> > So that is already a difference.
> 
> Definitely. Interoperability can lead to the "funniest"
> explorations... :-)

That would be one of the reasons for which it would be unwise to use
FreeBSD any more than I'm using it now.

> > > > What will you do when you run into bug 220004?
> > > 
> > > I don't know.
> > > I'm not using 12 yet: I see .0 releases (of any software) as potentially 
> > > immature and buggy and I'm absolutely not switching until 12.1 is
> > > out.
> > 
> > Then why doesn't the documentation warn about this?
> 
> Because (1) nobody noticed yet, and (2) because the attitude
> to not use .0 software is nothing "standard", but a specific
> preference of certain people (who probably have good reasons
> to do so). Personally, I've never been bitten by a .0 version
> of FreeBSD. I run Firefox successfully on 12.0-p7/i386, but
> there is no NFS involved.

The bug is over 2 years old, so people have noticed.

I'm usually not keen on using software right away the day it comes out
and rather give it a while so bugs can be discovered and fixed.
FreeBSD wasn't released the day I started using it and has a
reputation.

> > I was trying to
> > find out what the recommended stable version is, and that seems to be
> > 12 release.  Why call it release when it's still beta?
> 
> Because it isn't beta. FreeBSD has strong guidelines in place
> that prevent immature software to be released as a -RELEASE
> version: alpha, beta, release candidate(s), release version.
> But mistakes _can_ happen, and bugs might slip through. That's
> what the patches are for. So if you plan a new installation,
> you should use the current release, which is 12.0, and after
> installation, use freebsd-update to get the available patches.

That's what I thought.

> If you wish to use an older version, that's possible too, and
> that would be 11.3, which _also_ has the status of "production
> release", so it's _not_ legacy.

I like upgrading only so much ...

> More information here:
> 
> 	https://www.freebsd.org/releases/
> 
> Or you wait until 12.1, but that's probably not a solution here.

Right, I needed the solution a couple weeks ago.  At least it's
finally in testing.

And who says 12.1 would work better.