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1<articleinfo> 2 <title>&os;/&arch; &release.current; Release Notes</title> 3 4 <corpauthor>The FreeBSD Project</corpauthor> 5 6 <pubdate>$FreeBSD: head/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/relnotes/article.sgml 124348 2004-01-10 18:10:20Z bmah $</pubdate> 7 8 <copyright> 9 <year>2000</year> 10 <year>2001</year> 11 <year>2002</year> 12 <year>2003</year> 13 <year>2004</year> 14 <holder role="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org">The FreeBSD Documentation Project</holder> 15 </copyright> 16 17 <abstract> 18 <para>The release notes for &os; &release.current; contain a summary 19 of 20<![ %include.historic; [ 21 the changes made to the &os; base system since &release.prev;. 22]]> 23<![ %no.include.historic; [ 24 recent changes made to the &os; base system on the &release.branch; 25 development branch. 26]]> 27 This document lists applicable security advisories that were issued since 28 the last release, as well as significant changes to the &os; 29 kernel and userland. 30 Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented.</para> 31 </abstract> 32</articleinfo> 33 34<sect1 id="intro"> 35 <title>Introduction</title> 36 37 <para>This document contains the release notes for &os; 38 &release.current; on the &arch.print; hardware platform. It 39 describes recently added, changed, or deleted features of &os;. 40 It also provides some notes on upgrading 41 from previous versions of &os;.</para> 42 43<![ %release.type.snapshot [ 44 45 <para>The &release.type; distribution to which these release notes 46 apply represents a point along the &release.branch; development 47 branch between &release.prev; and the future &release.next;. Some 48 pre-built, binary &release.type; distributions along this branch 49 can be found at <ulink url="&release.url;"></ulink>.</para> 50 51]]> 52 53<![ %release.type.release [ 54 55 <para>This distribution of &os; &release.current; is a 56 &release.type; distribution. It can be found at <ulink 57 url="&release.url;"></ulink> or any of its mirrors. More 58 information on obtaining this (or other) &release.type; 59 distributions of &os; can be found in the <ulink 60 url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors.html"><quote>Obtaining 61 FreeBSD</quote> appendix</ulink> to the <ulink 62 url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/">FreeBSD 63 Handbook</ulink>.</para> 64 65]]> 66 67 <para>Users who are new to the &release.branch; series of &os; 68 &release.type;s should also read the <quote>Early Adopters Guide 69 to &os; &release.current;</quote>. This document can generally be 70 found in the same location as the release notes (either as a part of a 71 &os; distribution or on the &os; Web site). It contains important 72 information regarding the advantages and disadvantages of using 73 &os; &release.current;, as opposed to releases based on the &os; 74 4-STABLE development branch.</para> 75 76 <para>All users are encouraged to consult the release errata before 77 installing &os;. The errata document is updated with 78 <quote>late-breaking</quote> information discovered late in the 79 release cycle or after the release. Typically, it contains 80 information on known bugs, security advisories, and corrections to 81 documentation. An up-to-date copy of the errata for &os; 82 &release.current; can be found on the &os; Web site.</para> 83 84</sect1> 85 86<sect1 id="new"> 87 <title>What's New</title> 88 89 <para>This section describes 90<![ %include.historic; [ 91 the most user-visible new or changed features in &os; 92 since &release.prev;. 93 In general, changes described here are unique to the &release.branch; 94 branch unless specifically marked as &merged; features. 95]]> 96<![ %no.include.historic; [ 97 many of the user-visible new or changed features in &os; 98 since &release.prev;. It includes items that are unique to the 99 &release.branch; branch, as well as some features that may have been 100 recently merged to 101 other branches (after &os; &release.prev.historic;). The latter 102 items are marked as &merged;. 103]]> 104 </para> 105 106 <para>Typical release note items 107 document recent security advisories issued after 108 &release.prev.historic;, 109 new drivers or hardware support, new commands or options, 110 major bug fixes, or contributed software upgrades. They may also 111 list changes to major ports/packages or release engineering 112 practices. Clearly the release notes cannot list every single 113 change made to &os; between releases; this document focuses 114 primarily on security advisories, user-visible changes, and major 115 architectural improvements.</para> 116 117 <sect2 id="security"> 118 <title>Security Advisories</title> 119 120 <para></para> 121 122 </sect2> 123 124 <sect2 id="kernel"> 125 <title>Kernel Changes</title> 126 127 <para arch="i386,pc98">The dgb (DigiBoard intelligent serial card) driver has been 128 removed due to breakage. Its replacement is the &man.digi.4; driver, 129 which supports all the hardware of the dgb driver.</para> 130 131 <para arch="i386">The loran (Loran-C receiver) driver has been removed due to 132 breakage and lack of maintainership.</para> 133 134 <!-- Above this line, sort kernel changes by manpage/keyword--> 135 136 <sect3 id="proc"> 137 <title>Platform-Specific Hardware Support</title> 138 139 <para></para> 140 141 </sect3> 142 143 <sect3 id="boot"> 144 <title>Boot Loader Changes</title> 145 146 <para arch="i386">A serial console-capable version of 147 <filename>boot0</filename> has been added. It can be written 148 to a disk using &man.boot0cfg.8; and specifying 149 <filename>/boot/boot0sio</filename> as the argument to the 150 <option>-b</option> option.</para> 151 152 <!-- Above this line, order boot loader changes by keyword--> 153 154 </sect3> 155 156 <sect3 id="net-if"> 157 <title>Network Interface Support</title> 158 159 <para arch="i386,pc98">The hea (Efficient Networks, Inc. ENI-155p ATM adapter) 160 driver has been removed due to breakage. Its functionality 161 has been subsumed into the &man.en.4; driver.</para> 162 163 <para arch="i386">The lmc (LAN Media Corp. PCI WAN adapter) driver has been 164 removed due to breakage and lack of maintainership.</para> 165 166 <para arch="i386">A wrapper system has been added to allow 167 binary Windows NDIS miniport network drivers to be used with 168 FreeBSD. For more information, see the &man.ndis.4; and 169 &man.ndiscvt.8; manual pages.</para> 170 171 </sect3> 172 173 <sect3 id="net-proto"> 174 <title>Network Protocols</title> 175 176 <para>The following TCP features are now enabled by default: RFC 177 3042 (Limited Retransmit), RFC 3390 (increased initial 178 congestion window sizes), TCP bandwidth-delay product 179 limiting. More information can be found in &man.tcp.4;.</para> 180 181 <para>&os;'s TCP implementation now includes support for a 182 minimum MSS (settable via the 183 <varname>net.inet.tcp.minmss</varname> sysctl variable) and a 184 rate limit on connections that send many small TCP segments 185 within a short period of time (via the 186 <varname>net.inet.tcp.minmssoverload</varname> sysctl 187 variable). Connections exceeding this limit may be reset and 188 dropped. This feature provides protection against a class of 189 resource exhaustion attacks.</para> 190 191 </sect3> 192 193 <sect3 id="disks"> 194 <title>Disks and Storage</title> 195 196 <para></para> 197 198 </sect3> 199 200 <sect3 id="fs"> 201 <title>File Systems</title> 202 203 <para></para> 204 205 </sect3> 206 207 <sect3 id="mm"> 208 <title>Multimedia Support</title> 209 210 <para>The meteor (video capture) driver has been removed due to 211 breakage and lack of maintainership.</para> 212 213 </sect3> 214 215 </sect2> 216 217 <sect2 id="userland"> 218 <title>Userland Changes</title> 219 220 <para>The configuration files used by the &man.resolver.5; now 221 support the <literal>timeout:</literal> and 222 <literal>attempts:</literal> keywords.</para> 223 224 <para>&man.ipfw.8; now supports a <option>-b</option> flag to 225 print only the action and comment for each rule, thus omitting 226 the rule body.</para> 227 228 </sect2> 229 230 <sect2 id="contrib"> 231 <title>Contributed Software</title> 232 233 <para>The <application>ACPI-CA</application> code has been updated 234 from the 20030619 snapshot to the 20031203 snapshot.</para> 235 236 <para><application>OpenSSH</application> has been updated from 237 3.6.1p1 to 3.7.1p2.</para> 238 239 </sect2> 240 241 <sect2 id="ports"> 242 <title>Ports/Packages Collection Infrastructure</title> 243 244 <para></para> 245 246 </sect2> 247 248 <sect2 id="releng"> 249 <title>Release Engineering and Integration</title> 250 251 <para></para> 252 253 </sect2> 254 255 <sect2 id="doc"> 256 <title>Documentation</title> 257 258 <para></para> 259 260 </sect2> 261 262</sect1> 263 264<sect1 id="upgrade"> 265 <title>Upgrading from previous releases of &os;</title> 266 267 <para>Users with existing &os; systems are 268 <emphasis>highly</emphasis> encouraged to read the <quote>Early 269 Adopter's Guide to &os; &release.current;</quote>. This document generally has 270 the filename <filename>EARLY.TXT</filename> on the distribution 271 media, or any other place that the release notes can be found. It 272 offers some notes on upgrading, but more importantly, also 273 discusses some of the relative merits of upgrading to &os; 274 5.<replaceable>X</replaceable> versus running &os; 275 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable>.</para> 276 277 <important> 278 <para>Upgrading &os; should, of course, only be attempted after 279 backing up <emphasis>all</emphasis> data and configuration 280 files.</para> 281 </important> 282</sect1> 283