FreeBSD 5.3 is "stable" but not production-ready ?????

I found this article to be unreasonably critical of FreeBSD 5.3. I'm
running 6 production machines around the city using 5.3 and have found
that there are remarkable improvements in hardware compatibility, speed
and performance. Take all this with a grain of salt, since I consider
myself a novice and I don't know the skill level of the author of the
article.

AF wrote:

> I am getting ready to put in a new web/email/database server.
>
> What is the deal with this article?
>
> http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/14/1518217
>
> Should I install 4.11 instead?
>
> Or is 5.3 stable stable and good with the latest bug fixes and patches?
>
>
 >> Stay informed about: FreeBSD 5.3 is ""stable"" but not production-ready ????? 

In article , AF wrote:
>
>I am getting ready to put in a new web/email/database server.
>
>What is the deal with this article?
>
>http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/14/1518217
>
>Should I install 4.11 instead?
>
>Or is 5.3 stable stable and good with the latest bug fixes and patches?
>
>
My experience with 5.3 doesn't match his. No, AMD64 isn't perfect, but
I also wouldn't be trying to run a server on an AMD64 platform other
than Win2K3 because nothing else is even close to ready. Linux is
worse.
On ia32, it's fine. Stable, reliable, all the things one expects from
FreeBSD. I've not experience with trying to use ULE under ia32, so
can't comment there. It was, interestingly, the only non-Windows OS I
found eight months ago, back in 5.2.1, that wasn't beta and had native
SATA support.

If you're building an ia32 server, I'd recommend 5.3 fully. You might
want to give it a spot of acceptance testing, though, just to be certain
that it's right for your needs.
At the end of the day, that's all you can do. Install, test, if it
throws up on you you just reinstall with 4.11.

--
Matthew Poole Auckland, New Zealand
"Veni, vidi, velcro...
I came, I saw, I stuck around"

My real e-mail is mattATp00leDOTnet
 >> Stay informed about: FreeBSD 5.3 is ""stable"" but not production-ready ????? 

AF wrote:

>
> I am getting ready to put in a new web/email/database server.
>
> What is the deal with this article?
>
> http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/14/1518217
>
> Should I install 4.11 instead?
>
> Or is 5.3 stable stable and good with the latest bug fixes and patches?

It would have been nice if he included some real examples of the problems he
claims. Or some links documenting the problems as known.
 >> Stay informed about: FreeBSD 5.3 is ""stable"" but not production-ready ????? 

AF wrote:
> Should I install 4.11 instead?

You still got two years support for 4.11.
 >> Stay informed about: FreeBSD 5.3 is ""stable"" but not production-ready ????? 

AF wrote:
> I am getting ready to put in a new web/email/database server.
>
> What is the deal with this article?
>
> http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/14/1518217
>
> Should I install 4.11 instead?
>
> Or is 5.3 stable stable and good with the latest bug fixes and patches?
>
>
I don't really ecounter any problem. I wrote a complex inventory system
for my client using perl+Mysql in a Intel-base 32bit machine, with 254MB
RAM and 2.0 Celeron CPU, 160000 records in a table in the mysql
database, the machine still runs smoothly without crash or freeze. The
CPU loading went up to 98% when executing JOIN in running some very
complex queries.

May be the network loading is light, so I don't have a chance to see the
problems.

I also installed FreeBSD 5.3 in IBM laptop T40, with skype, MSN and
Realplayer running very smoothly in the system. I don't see any scatter
voice bad quality. It sounds at least as good as in MS Windows. USB
mouse with scollering-wheel also enabled. The skype version is 0.9, the
function with calling out and receiving calls are all functioning very
well.

Sam.
 >> Stay informed about: FreeBSD 5.3 is ""stable"" but not production-ready ????? 

On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 23:45:41 -0500, AF wrote:

> I am getting ready to put in a new web/email/database server.
> What is the deal with this article?
> http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/14/1518217
> Should I install 4.11 instead?
> Or is 5.3 stable stable and good with the latest bug fixes and patches?

5.3 is fine, but it probably still isn't as stable as 4.11.

Actually I got two crashes, one was when unloading a kernel module (this
was 3rd party module, so I doubt it was FreeBSD fault), another
(apparently) while dump was removing snapshot, after it finished backup on
live system (according to the screen from ssh, because the last line was
that backup was finished, but I didn't saw the prompt).

After the second backup I decided to recompile kernel to have DDB and
debugging symbols. But after that, I didn't had any crash yet (14 days),
and I do backup daily.

--
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 >> Stay informed about: FreeBSD 5.3 is ""stable"" but not production-ready ?????