Possibility for FreeBSD 4.11 Extended Support

Helge.Oldach at atosorigin.com Helge.Oldach at atosorigin.com
Fri Dec 22 08:38:55 PST 2006


Pete French <> wrote on Friday, December 22, 2006 2:44 PM:
>> Because everybody knows that odd numbered releases aren't stable.
> 
> I've been 20 years in electronics & comouting and thats the first
> time I have ever heard anyone say that! Steer clear of '.0' releases
> is well known, but suspecting something just because of the odd or
> evenness of it's numbering scheme seems like pure superstition.

The odd/even rule is just over-generalization, derived from the Linux kernel numbering scheme.

Personally, I've been upgrading lots of servers from 4-STABLE to 5-STABLE to 6-STABLE without trouble. Yes, it is some amount of work (particularly if you want UFS2 benefits and thus have to newfs all filesystemes), but it is absolutely doable and certainly not a killer job.

Of course upgrading hundreds, even thousands of remote servers is a different task. But then you want professional support anyway...

Frankly, I can't follow the argument that 6.x is "unstable". After all, it's named 6-STABLE for a reason. I'd say from experience that the reason is perfectly valid. Actually I have two older servers that got "just stuck" every few weeks with 4-STABLE and 5-STABLE and called for a hard reboot -- these two have been rock solid ever since they were upgraded to 6-STABLE.

Greets,
Helge


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