FreeBSD 5.4: Is it generally unstable?

[Matthias Buelow]

Charles Swiger wrote:

> Yanking a mounted device out from under Unix has always been a no- no. 
> It would be nice if FreeBSD handled this better, but this  problem falls
> into the "operator error: don't do that" category.

I'm aware that some things have different priority but it is imho
inacceptable over the long run, that if you (accidentally) rip out a
mounted usb stick, that the system is unable to flush _any_ buffers and
panics upon shutdown. This should be fixed, why doesn't the kernel just
discard the buffers for the disappeared device?  While it is an
"operator error", users accidentally pulling usb sticks, iPods, etc. is
something that just happens (happened to me 3 times already).

> 5.3 and earlier especially have struck me as being noticably slower 
> than 4.10 or so, but there have been significant improvements since 
> then, and 5.4 and 4.1x seem to be comparable.  To do better than a 

There has been a thread going on here some time ago where I wrote about
this.

mkb.