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The release notes for FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE contain a summary of the changes made to the FreeBSD base system on the 7-STABLE development line. This document lists applicable security advisories that were issued since the last release, as well as significant changes to the FreeBSD kernel and userland. Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented.
This document contains the release notes for FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE. It describes recently added, changed, or deleted features of FreeBSD. It also provides some notes on upgrading from previous versions of FreeBSD.
The snapshot distribution to which these release notes apply represents a point along the 7-STABLE development branch between 7.0-RELEASE and the future 7.1-RELEASE. Information regarding pre-built, binary snapshot distributions along this branch can be found at http://www.FreeBSD.org/snapshots/.
All users are encouraged to consult the release errata before installing FreeBSD. The errata document is updated with “late-breaking” information discovered late in the release cycle or after the release. Typically, it contains information on known bugs, security advisories, and corrections to documentation. An up-to-date copy of the errata for FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE can be found on the FreeBSD Web site.
This section describes the most user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 7.0-RELEASE.
Typical release note items document recent security advisories issued after 7.0-RELEASE, new drivers or hardware support, new commands or options, major bug fixes, or contributed software upgrades. They may also list changes to major ports/packages or release engineering practices. Clearly the release notes cannot list every single change made to FreeBSD between releases; this document focuses primarily on security advisories, user-visible changes, and major architectural improvements.
The ddb(4) kernel debugger now has an output capture facility. Input and output from ddb(4) can now be captured to a memory buffer for later inspection using sysctl(8) or a textdump. The new capture command controls this feature.
The ddb(4) debugger now supports a simple scripting facility, which supports a set of named scripts consisting of a set of ddb(4) commands. These commands can be managed from within ddb(4) or with the use of the new ddb(8) utility. More details can be found in the ddb(4) manual page.
The kernel now supports a new textdump format of kernel dumps. A textdump provides higher-level information via mechanically generated/extracted debugging output, rather than a simple memory dump. This facility can be used to generate brief kernel bug reports that are rich in debugging information, but are not dependent on kernel symbol tables or precisely synchronized source code. More information can be found in the textdump(4) manual page.
[amd64, i386] The ULE scheduler is now the default process scheduler in GENERIC kernels.
[amd64, i386] The BTX kernel used by the boot loader has been changed to invoke BIOS routines from real mode. This change makes it possible to boot FreeBSD from USB devices.
[amd64, i386] A new gptboot boot loader has been added to support booting from a GPT labeled disk. A new boot command has been added to gpt(8), which makes a GPT disk bootable by writing the required bits of the boot loader, creating a new boot partition if required.
The cmx(4) driver, a driver for Omnikey CardMan 4040 PCMCIA smartcard readers, has been added.
The uslcom(4) driver, a driver for Silicon Laboratories CP2101/CP2102-based USB serial adapters, has been imported from OpenBSD.
[amd64, i386] The wpi(4) driver has been updated to include a number of stability fixes.
The aac(4) driver now supports volumes larger than 2TB in size.
The hptrr(4) driver has been updated to version 1.2 from Highpoint.
The
adduser(8)
utility now supports a -M option to set the mode of a new
user's home directory.
chflags(1) now
supports a -v flag for verbose output and a -f flag to ignore errors with the same semantics as (for example)
chmod(1).
The
realpath(1)
utility now supports a -q flag to suppress warnings; it now
also accepts multiple paths on its command line.
ypserv(8) now
supports a -P option to specify the port number on which it
should listen.
AMD has been updated from 6.0.10 to 6.1.5.
awk has been updated from 1 May 2007 release to the 23 October 2007 release.
bzip2 has been updated from 1.0.4 to 1.0.5.
OpenPAM has been updated from the Figwort release to the Hydrangea release.
The timezone database has been updated from the tzdata2007h release to the tzdata2008b release.
The supported version of the GNOME desktop environment (x11/gnome2) has been updated from 2.20.1 to 2.22.
[i386, amd64] Beginning with FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE, binary upgrades between RELEASE versions (and snapshots of the various security branches) are supported using the freebsd-update(8) utility. The binary upgrade procedure will update unmodified userland utilities, as well as unmodified GENERIC or SMP kernels distributed as a part of an official FreeBSD release. The freebsd-update(8) utility requires that the host being upgraded have Internet connectivity.
An older form of binary upgrade is supported through the Upgrade option from the main sysinstall(8) menu on CDROM distribution media. This type of binary upgrade may be useful on non-i386, non-amd64 machines or on systems with no Internet connectivity.
Source-based upgrades (those based on recompiling the FreeBSD base system from source code) from previous versions are supported, according to the instructions in /usr/src/UPDATING.
Important: Upgrading FreeBSD should, of course, only be attempted after backing up all data and configuration files.
This file, and other release-related documents, can be downloaded from http://www.FreeBSD.org/snapshots/.
For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
All users of FreeBSD 7-STABLE should subscribe to the <stable@FreeBSD.org> mailing list.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.