FreeBSD 7.0-BETA4 - Is it stable for home user?

Howard Goldstein wrote:
> On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:00:54 GMT, A2B wrote:
> : does xorg work with all the ports
>
> Starting at 7.02b2 to 3 from as recently as last sunday has been solid
> on the desktop here. I rebuilt all of my ports for xorg 7 months ago
> however. If you're already at xorg7 it should be a painless source
> update.
>

Likewise. I upgraded to xorg 7 a few months back. I use gdm for my
desktop. Two weeks ago I upgraded from FreeBSD 6.3 to 7.0 BETA2. No
problems.
 >> Stay informed about: FreeBSD 7.0-BETA4 - Is it stable for home user? 

On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 00:17:43 +0000, Max Haus wrote:

> Howard Goldstein wrote:
>> On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:00:54 GMT, A2B wrote:
>> : does xorg work with all the ports
>>
>> Starting at 7.02b2 to 3 from as recently as last sunday has been solid
>> on the desktop here. I rebuilt all of my ports for xorg 7 months ago
>> however. If you're already at xorg7 it should be a painless source
>> update.
>>
>>
> Likewise. I upgraded to xorg 7 a few months back. I use gdm for my
> desktop. Two weeks ago I upgraded from FreeBSD 6.3 to 7.0 BETA2. No
> problems.

Yes, but have you attempted to upgrade your installed ports since the
switch to 7.0? When I did, all sorts of things broke, because the non-
upgraded shared libraries were linked against libpthread, but the new
ones were against libthr, which meant that applications linking to both
old and new libraries broke in ugly ways (similarly for bumped versions
of libc, libm and libz, and probably others). As far as I can tell, the
only way to proceed is (a) exit X and fall back to a "core"-only console
environment, and then portupgrade -af (probably --batch, so you don't
have to nurse it through all of the configs). The trouble with *that* is
that if anything doesn't build properly, there's no way to tell
portupgrade not to rebuild all of the pieces that *did* build OK the last
time (it has no breakpoint/restart mechanism). So you can use
portupgrade --batch -akf, and then fix broken ports by hand, if you can.

Having been working my way through this maze for a week or two, I'm half
of the opinion that I should have just made a list of the installed ports
(i.e., ls /var/db/pkg), backed up /usr/local/etc, and then blown /usr/
local clean away, and then portinstalled from my list.

7.0 seems beautifully stable in and of itself. It's certainly great for
server applications, and it's probably fine if you're doing a clean
install. There's library version bumpage to watch out for if you try to
upgrade in place, though. Particularly for a desktop, where the amount
of ports-based stuff tends to be *large*.

Cheers,

--
Andrew
 >> Stay informed about: FreeBSD 7.0-BETA4 - Is it stable for home user? 

On 12/07/2007 05:47 AM, Max Haus wrote:
> Howard Goldstein wrote:
>> On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:00:54 GMT, A2B wrote:
>> : does xorg work with all the ports
>>
>> Starting at 7.02b2 to 3 from as recently as last sunday has been solid
>> on the desktop here. I rebuilt all of my ports for xorg 7 months ago
>> however. If you're already at xorg7 it should be a painless source
>> update.
>>
>
> Likewise. I upgraded to xorg 7 a few months back. I use gdm for my
> desktop. Two weeks ago I upgraded from FreeBSD 6.3 to 7.0 BETA2. No
> problems.

I did many experiments while I was trying to make my Intel/PRO 2200BG
card work smoothly with FreeBSD -- upgraded from 6.0-RELEASE to 6.1,
then 6.2 and even 7.0-CURRENT, downgraded to 6.1-RELEASE, upgraded again
to 7.0-CURRENT; Xorg 7.x stopped working during one downgrade that's why
I again moved to 7.0-CURRENT and now a days I am running 8.0-CURRENT,
Xorg-7.3, KDE-3.5.8 on my DELL Inspiron 4150 without any problems.

FYI, all my lib/compat subdirectories are clean and, or empty; I don't
install pre-compiled packages and I'm patient enough to make the broken
apps work; all this seems quite a tedious job sometimes.

All you have to do is read the /usr/src/UPDATING and /usr/ports/UPDATING
files carefully and follow directions of developers and, or maintainers
of these systems. Moreover, one should know well what one is doing.

As for as stability of 7.0-BETA4 and, or other BETA releases for home
user is concerned -- their is no harm in trying these. The FreeBSD is
community project, developed and, or maintained by users for users, so
the feedback and, or constructive criticism from users is not only
welcomed, but is also appreciated as contribution.

--
Dr Balwinder S "bsd" Dheeman Registered Linux User: #229709
Anu'z Linux@HOME (Unix Shoppe) Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192
Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India Gentoo, Fedora, Debian/FreeBSD/XP
Home: http://cto.homelinux.net/~bsd/ Visit: http://counter.li.org/
 >> Stay informed about: FreeBSD 7.0-BETA4 - Is it stable for home user? 

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hgoldste DeleteThis @mpcs.com (Howard Goldstein) writes:

> On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:34:55 GMT, Howard Goldstein wrote:
> : Did you make delete-old-libs? I did and man that's a mistake, it that
> : broke everything. I had to copy the old libs from a box I didn't
> : upgrade.
> :
> : You'll need to rebuild everyting if you delted old libs
>
> It was like 9AM when I wrote this and no, I was not drunk. I write
> better when I'm soused. Hopefully you got the idea.
>
> When I upgraded that second box from 6.2 stable to 7.0b2 I didn't have
> the ports issues at all because I refrained from doing a make
> delete-old-libs. Make delete-old is cool, delete-old-libs is not
> cool.
>
> So long as you don't remove the old libs the old ports should run
> quite happily. The old ports are linked to versionized libs and
> they'll coexist with new ports built against new libraries.
>
> Now whether it's a good idea to keep it that way for any length of
> time is another matter. Probably not the best idea if the old libs
> are buggy.

Or if you plan on building any new ports.

--
Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer
http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/
 >> Stay informed about: FreeBSD 7.0-BETA4 - Is it stable for home user? 

Howard Goldstein wrote:
> On 7 Dec 2007 05:02:53 GMT, Andrew Reilly wrote:
> : On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 00:17:43 +0000, Max Haus wrote:
> :
> : > Howard Goldstein wrote:
> : >> On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:00:54 GMT, A2B wrote:
> : >> : does xorg work with all the ports
> : >>
> : >> Starting at 7.02b2 to 3 from as recently as last sunday has been solid
> : >> on the desktop here. I rebuilt all of my ports for xorg 7 months ago
> : >> however. If you're already at xorg7 it should be a painless source
> : >> update.
> : >>
> : >>
> : > Likewise. I upgraded to xorg 7 a few months back. I use gdm for my
> : > desktop. Two weeks ago I upgraded from FreeBSD 6.3 to 7.0 BETA2. No
> : > problems.
> :
> : Yes, but have you attempted to upgrade your installed ports since the
> : switch to 7.0?
>
> Yes, I csup the ports tree and portupgrade -aR every day

Pretty much the same with me, except I do a cvsup on the ports tree
every weekend, because my ISP gives me more download then. I then do a
"portupgrade -varR".
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hgoldste RemoveThis @mpcs.com (Howard Goldstein) writes:

> That isn't a problem since new port builds link to the new libs,

As long as you have new libraries for everything, then you're fine.
But if you left any old ports libraries not upgraded, new ports will
link to a mix of old and new libraries, and the results will tend to
be unpleasant.
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Howard Goldstein wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Dec 2007 17:36:23 -0500, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
> : hgoldste RemoveThis @mpcs.com (Howard Goldstein) writes:
> :
> : > That isn't a problem since new port builds link to the new libs,
> :
> : As long as you have new libraries for everything, then you're fine.
> : But if you left any old ports libraries not upgraded, new ports will
> : link to a mix of old and new libraries, and the results will tend to
> : be unpleasant.
>
> I don't think that can happen without some exceptional forcing. When
> a base library version changes the symlinks go with it. Subsequent
> port builds are branded with whatever's pointed to at buildtime by the
> symlink.
>
> The sort of forcing might be by overwriting an install with an earlier
> binary install. Can you think of any situation where the old/new is
> going to cause problems not mentioned already?
>

Yes, suppose that some binary A requires a library B, and another C
and moreover B requires another library D, and C also requires D.
(Yes a library can link another library, typical example threading libs).

Now you are open after upgrades to the fact that A links two different
versions of the same D, which leads to sure crash. I think this is
precisely what occurred to people with upgrades of the threading
libraries and partial upgrade of ports.

--

Michel TALON
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