Thursday, 9 Sep 2004

Introduction to FreeBSD

MurrayStokely

<murray@freebsd.org>

What is FreeBSD?

Who uses FreeBSD?

FreeBSD Development Model

FreeBSD Release / Branch Terminology

Recent FreeBSD Releases

FreeBSD 5.3

Outline

FreeBSD is a production-quality operating system derived from BSD UNIX.

Widely deployed as a component, and in its own right. Workstation, server, and high-end embedded markets.

Workstation, server, and high-end embedded markets.

Berkeley permits broad commercial re-use in open and closed source products.

i386, ia64, amd64, sparc64, alpha

What is FreeBSD?

Yahoo!, Apache, Sony Japan, Netcraft, Weathernews, Supervalue.

Apple chose FreeBSD over Linux as the Unix core for Mac OS X.

According to Netcraft, nearly 2.5 million active sites use FreeBSD as a network server -- about one million more than Red Hat Linuxhttp://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsid=1908 http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3367381 .

In the last year alone, about one million new FreeBSD hosts were counted by Netcraft, an incredible growth rate despite more media attention towards Linux.

FreeBSD is used by many of the world's largest corporations, and busiest Internet sites.

Who Uses FreeBSD?

Several of the largest commercial banks in the world are using FreeBSD in their processing of business to business transactions.

Combined, these systems process about 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars per year and growing. They are using X11, Apache, jails, Perl, and a lot of other free software.

Factors that help: Stability Source availability for helping understand and fix problems that occur (having the source to the system helps you to understand why your application does not do what you expect) Good performance Easy hardware upgrade paths The application is spread over many servers. Need more power in one part? Add more FreeBSD boxes. yoyoPC hardware sometimes is less than perfect, but at PC hardware prices, hot spares are practical.

Stability

Source availability for helping understand and fix problems that occur (having the source to the system helps you to understand why your application does not do what you expect)

Good performance

Easy hardware upgrade paths

The application is spread over many servers. Need more power in one part? Add more FreeBSD boxes.

FreeBSD in the Banking Industry

BSD has existed since the late 1970's and was the testbed and reference implementation for TCP/IP.

The Internet Software Consortium (ISC) uses FreeBSD exclusively for f-root domain servers (in 21 cities now, usually with 3 servers per city).

Modern FreeBSD is extremely refined and mature.

FreeBSD consistently places at the top of the "uptime" lists produced by Netcraft to measure the stability of the world's busiest websites.

FreeBSD Used for Internet Infrastructure

FreeBSD is frequently used as a platform for embedded networking devices, including products from IBM, Inktomi, Juniper Networks, GTA, and Network Alchemy - a Nokia Company. http://www.hyperchip.com/Coverage/ICD/router_makers_speak_out.htm

The Weather Channel uses FreeBSD to do realtime audio/video presentation in hundreds of locations across the US serving content to millions of cable and satellite customers.

The BSD license makes these commercial embedded applications possible.

Embedded Uses of FreeBSD

FreeBSD development continues along two parallel branches; FreeBSD-CURRENT and FreeBSD-STABLE.

FreeBSD-CURRENT is the main trunk of our CVS repository. All new development should happen here.

FreeBSD-STABLE is the branch from which major releases are made. Changes enter this branch at a different pace, and with the general assumption that they have been well tested by our user community running -CURRENT.

FreeBSD Development Model

Chart from releng paper goes here.

FreeBSD Release Diagram

Thousands of developers around the world contribute code to FreeBSD.

Only the committers have write access to the CVS repository.

324 total committers in FreeBSD (includs source, documentation, and ports committers).

212 active committers to src/ in the last 12 months.

165 active committers to src/sys in the last 12 months.

FreeBSD Development Model

Users and external developers should submit bug fixes, enhancements, or problem reports with GNATS.

Online submission forms, send-pr command installed by default on FreeBSD systems, etc.

FreeBSD Development Model

Stable releases are made from the -STABLE development branch at approximately 4 month intervals.

Major new versions (3.0, 4.0, 5.0, etc..) are released at much longer intervals when the main goals for that release have been realized. 3.0 - October 1998 4.0 - March 2000 5.0 - January 2003

3.0 - October 1998

4.0 - March 2000

5.0 - January 2003

In periods of transition, point releases from the previous branch are still released while the next major release branch stabilizes. (e.g., 4.8, 4.9, and 4.10 were released after 5.0)

FreeBSD Release Process

FreeBSD 4.X-STABLE continues incremental feature, performance, stability development. FreeBSD 4.9 (October, 2003) FreeBSD 4.10 (May, 2004)

FreeBSD 4.9 (October, 2003)

FreeBSD 4.10 (May, 2004)

FreeBSD 5.X-CURRENT continues higher risk development, approaches -STABLE. FreeBSD 5.0 (January, 2003) FreeBSD 5.1 (June, 2003) FreeBSD 5.2 (January, 2004) FreeBSD 5.2.1 (February, 2004)

FreeBSD 5.0 (January, 2003)

FreeBSD 5.1 (June, 2003)

FreeBSD 5.2 (January, 2004)

FreeBSD 5.2.1 (February, 2004)

Recent Releases

A number of committees with special responsibilities have been created within the FreeBSD Project to ensure that the project continues to move in a positive direction.

The FreeBSD Core Team is a group of 9 developers elected by the committers for 2 year terms.

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is a small group of developers responsible for managing the release process.

FreeBSD Organization

NDIS Binary Compatibility allows Windows XP network device drivers to be used with FreeBSD.

IP Fast Forwarding for dramatic speedups in FreeBSD based routers.

Continued locking and performance improvements to take advanced of SMPng architecture.

What's new in FreeBSD 5.3

FreeBSD (i386) can use binary Ethernet and WLAN network drivers written to the Windows XP NDIS 5.1 specification. Windows drivers are turned into FreeBSD Kernel Loadable Modules (KLDs) with the ndiscvt command :

More information is available in ndis(4), ndisapi(9), and ndiscvt(8). This functionality was written by Bill Paul.

FreeBSD 5.3 Network Changes

http://www.FreeBSD.org

FreeBSD Handbook

FreeBSD Mall, Inc.

More Information

Murray Stokely

2001-03-21T20:49:34