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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!darwin.sura.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!agate!usenet From: jkh@whisker.lotus.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.announce Subject: FreeBSD-current and ports archives now available via ftp Followup-To: poster Date: 11 Jan 1994 18:39:26 -0800 Organization: Dublin, Ireland Lines: 91 Sender: cgd@agate.berkeley.edu Approved: 386bsd-announce-request@agate.berkeley.edu Distribution: world Message-ID: <JKH.94Jan11215151@whisker.lotus.ie> NNTP-Posting-Host: agate.berkeley.edu NOTE: BEFORE READING THE FOLLOWING AND RUNNING OFF WITH MORE ENTHUSIASM THAN FOREKNOWLEDGE, PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT YOU SHOULD *NOT* UPGRADE TO FREEBSD-CURRENT UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND CAN BAIL YOURSELF OUT OF ANY SORT OF TROUBLE THAT RUNNING CHANGING, DEVELOPMENTAL SOURCES CAN SOMETIMES CAUSE! I'm sorry for the caps, but you'd be amazed at how many folks jump on the -current bandwagon and then are somehow surprised when things occasionally break, or they find that they're required to upgrade whole chunks of their system with no safety net in sight! We do and will continue to try to help people come to grips with FreeBSD-current, but simply don't have the time to cope with hoards of new users who would have a hard enough time with the release version, much less our development sources. What FreeBSD-current provides is a way for BSD hackers and highly motivated enthusiasts to see just what it is we're doing, potentially up to the day it happens (see note), and being that far out on the edge sometimes has its price (you fall off). I should point out that we naturally take great care to keep our development sources in good working order, and free from pathological system-eating changes, but still - if you want well tested, _release engineered_ bits, then you want our RELEASES, not FreeBSD-current! Note: If you really want to stay _current_, that is up-to-the-day, then the `sup' protocol, described in freefall.cdrom.com:~ftp/sup, is a FAR better way of staying current than ftp. Please use it in preference to ftp if you have good internet connectivity and want a constantly updated source tree. Now, with all that preamble out of the way (whew!), on to the announcement itself! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The /usr/src and /usr/ports directories of freefall.cdrom.com are now availiable via ftp from freebsd.cdrom.com:~ftp/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current. These are the same areas that sup accesses, so now you can sup, or you can ftp. freebsd.cdrom.com runs `wuftpd', an enhanced ftp daemon that allows you to get individual files or whole trees, with optional compression. For example, to get a -current kernel tree you might do something like this: ftp freebsd.cdrom.com user: ftp password: joe@blow.com ftp> cd /pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/src ftp> bin ftp> get sys.tar.Z Which would get you a compressed tar file of the sys tree. You can also browse around, grabbing individual files; something that's very handy when you hear that your particular problem has been solved in FreeBSD-current and you just want a small subset of the release (though again, in such upgrades you're on your own!). ---------------------------------------------- FreeBSD-current in its entirety represents a rather large number of changes from 1.0. There are shared libraries, changes to the VM, SCSI and kernel exec systems, and the default executable MAGIC format has changed. Before upgrading to any large portion of these bits, it's always a good idea to grab the kernel, build it for your machine, and reboot with it before proceeding to install anything else; some executables generated under a complete FreeBSD-current require _kernel_ support to run. FreeBSD 1.1, incorporating everything in -current and many changes to come, is planned sometime for the March/April timeframe. If you're anxious to upgrade, but don't have the time or courage necessary to go to -current (which is by no means a bad thing to admit to ones self), I recommend that you simply wait until then; you'll have the additional benefit of our focused attention on support, and the company of many other users who are going through the same process simultaneously.. Thank you! Jordan Hubbard -- (Jordan K. Hubbard) jkh@violet.berkeley.edu, jkh@al.org, jkh@whisker.lotus.ie FreeBSD Core Team, American Liver Association, Hedgehog Breeders Society -- Please send submissions for comp.os.386bsd.announce to: 386bsd-announce@agate.berkeley.edu