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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional-Based Extension//EN" [
<!ENTITY base CDATA "..">
<!ENTITY date "$FreeBSD: www/en/snapshots/index.sgml,v 1.43 2008/03/10 17:03:38 simon Exp $">
<!ENTITY title "FreeBSD Snapshot Releases">
<!ENTITY % navinclude.download "INCLUDE">
<!ENTITY % developers PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES FreeBSD Developers Entities//EN"> %developers;
<!ENTITY url.snapshots "ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots">
]>
<!-- $FreeBSD: www/en/snapshots/index.sgml,v 1.43 2008/03/10 17:03:38 simon Exp $ -->
<html>
&header;
<h2>What Are Snapshots?</h2>
<p>As part of an ongoing effort to improve the overall release process
<em>before</em> a release actually slips out the door with problems,
we are now periodically producing interim test releases called
<em>snapshots</em>.
These snapshots will be very similar to full releases,
except that they might not include all the bits included in a
full release (such as packages and updated documentation).</p>
<h2>Getting Snapshots</h2>
<p>The latest snapshots made available can be found on the FreeBSD
FTP mirrors at the address <a
href="&url.snapshots;">&url.snapshots;</a>. They can also be
found in the same directory on other FTP
<a href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html">mirror
sites</a>.</p>
<p>Currently the snapshots of
<a href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html#CURRENT">9-CURRENT</a>,
<a href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html#STABLE">8-STABLE</a>,
<a href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html#STABLE">7-STABLE</a>,
and
<a href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html#STABLE">6-STABLE</a>
are released monthly in directories whose URLs have the format
<tt>&url.snapshots;/<year><month>/</tt>
where <tt><year></tt> is the four-digit year and
<tt><month></tt> is the two-digit month in which the snapshot was released.
For each supported platform, the snapshot includes ISO images of
the <tt>bootonly</tt>,
<tt>disc1</tt>, and <tt>disc2</tt> disks (plus
the separate <tt>livefs</tt> disk on platforms where this is
applicable).
Each snapshot directory might contain a <tt>RELNOTES.TXT</tt>
file which outlines the changes for the particular snapshot.</p>
<h2>Things You Might Want to Know</h2>
<p>In particular, before getting and installing a snapshot release,
be aware of following:</p>
<ul>
<li>The snapshots are primarily for
testing purposes and not fully tested compared to the releases.
They may include experimental or degraded features that
can corrupt your existing system.</li>
<li>The major release number will not be changed in the
main distribution for each snapshot.
It will <em>only</em> be changed on the boot floppies
so that you know when the snapshot was made.
These are <em>not</em> releases, these are <em>snapshots</em>,
and it is important that this distinction be preserved.
Although people can and will, of course, refer to snapshots
by date in mail or netnews, do not confuse them.</li>
<li>Snapshots might not include package sets, but will generally
include a ports tree.</li>
<li>Finally, we will not necessarily update the documentation.
For example, <tt>README</tt> may still refer
to a previous release. This is because that is much less important
than getting the real bug fixes and new features out for testing.
Please do not send a bug report about the documentation.</li>
</ul>
<p>Your feedback on these snapshots is, of course, greatly welcome.
They are not just for our benefit - those who are coming to rely
on FreeBSD for mission critical applications should welcome
a chance to get at more updated bits in a structured fashion.
You can also use these snapshots as tangible evidence that your
feedback is getting incorporated and that you (hopefully) will not have
any unpleasant surprises in the next release.
On the other hand, if you do send us hate mail next release
and it turns out that you never even tried the snapshots,
well, it cuts both ways!</p>
<!--
<h2>Other Resources</h2>
<p>Here are some related resources. Note that they are managed by
people other than the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team.
These sites provide FreeBSD snapshots in a form of "live filesystem"
and bootable ISO images on a daily basis.
For details, visit the following links and contact them directly
if you have any questions.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://snapshots.us.FreeBSD.org/">FreeBSD snapshots by &a.brd; (brd@)</a>.</li>
</ul>
-->
&footer;
</body>
</html>
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