path: root/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/relnotes/article.sgml

<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//DTD DocBook V4.1-Based Extension//EN" [
<!ENTITY % articles.ent PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES DocBook FreeBSD Articles Entity Set//EN">
%articles.ent;

<!ENTITY % release PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES Release Specification//EN">
%release;

<!-- Text constants which probably don't need to be changed.-->

<!ENTITY % include.historic "IGNORE">
<!ENTITY % no.include.historic "IGNORE">
]>

<article>
<articleinfo>
  <title>&os; &release.current; Release Notes</title>

  <corpauthor>The &os; Project</corpauthor>

  <pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>

  <copyright>
    <year>2000</year>
    <year>2001</year>
    <year>2002</year>
    <year>2003</year>
    <year>2004</year>
    <year>2005</year>
    <year>2006</year>
    <year>2007</year>
    <year>2008</year>
    <holder role="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org">The &os; Documentation Project</holder>
  </copyright>

  <legalnotice id="trademarks" role="trademarks">
    &tm-attrib.freebsd;
    &tm-attrib.ibm;
    &tm-attrib.ieee;
    &tm-attrib.intel;
    &tm-attrib.sparc;
    &tm-attrib.general;
  </legalnotice>

  <abstract>
    <para>The release notes for &os; &release.current; contain a summary
      of the changes made to the &os; base system on the
      &release.branch; development line.
      This document lists applicable security advisories that were issued since
      the last release, as well as significant changes to the &os;
      kernel and userland.
      Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented.</para>
  </abstract>
</articleinfo>

<sect1 id="intro">
  <title>Introduction</title>

  <para>This document contains the release notes for &os;
    &release.current;.  It
    describes recently added, changed, or deleted features of &os;.
    It also provides some notes on upgrading
    from previous versions of &os;.</para>

<![ %release.type.current [

  <para>The &release.type; distribution to which these release notes
    apply represents the latest point along the &release.branch; development
    branch since &release.branch; was created.  Information regarding pre-built, binary
    &release.type; distributions along this branch
    can be found at <ulink url="&release.url;"></ulink>.</para>

]]>

<![ %release.type.snapshot [

  <para>The &release.type; distribution to which these release notes
    apply represents a point along the &release.branch; development
    branch between &release.prev; and the future &release.next;.
    Information regarding
    pre-built, binary &release.type; distributions along this branch
    can be found at <ulink url="&release.url;"></ulink>.</para>

]]>

<![ %release.type.release [

  <para>This distribution of &os; &release.current; is a
    &release.type; distribution.  It can be found at <ulink
    url="&release.url;"></ulink> or any of its mirrors.  More
    information on obtaining this (or other) &release.type;
    distributions of &os; can be found in the <ulink
    url="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors.html"><quote>Obtaining
    &os;</quote> appendix</ulink> to the <ulink
    url="&url.books.handbook;/">&os;
    Handbook</ulink>.</para>

]]>

  <para>All users are encouraged to consult the release errata before
    installing &os;.  The errata document is updated with
    <quote>late-breaking</quote> 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 &os;
    &release.current; can be found on the &os; Web site.</para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="new">
  <title>What's New</title>

  <para>This section describes
    the most user-visible new or changed features in &os;
    since &release.prev;.
    In general, changes described here are unique to the &release.branch;
    branch unless specifically marked as &merged; features.
  </para>

  <para>Typical release note items
    document recent security advisories issued after
    &release.prev;,
    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 &os; between releases; this document focuses
    primarily on security advisories, user-visible changes, and major
    architectural improvements.</para>

  <sect2 id="security">
    <title>Security Advisories</title>

    <para></para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="kernel">
    <title>Kernel Changes</title>

    <para>A new &man.cpuset.2; API has been added
      for thread to CPU binding and CPU resource grouping and
      assignment.  The &man.cpuset.1; userland utility has been added
      to allow manipulation of processor sets.</para>

    <para role="merged">The &man.ddb.4; kernel debugger now has an output capture
      facility.  Input and output from &man.ddb.4; can now be captured
      to a memory buffer for later inspection using &man.sysctl.8; or
      a textdump.  The new <command>capture</command> command controls
      this feature.</para>

    <para role="merged">The &man.ddb.4; debugger now supports a simple scripting
      facility, which supports a set of named scripts consisting of a
      set of &man.ddb.4; commands.  These commands can be managed from
      within &man.ddb.4; or with the use of the new &man.ddb.8;
      utility.  More details can be found in the &man.ddb.4; manual
      page.</para>

    <para role="merged">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
      &man.textdump.4; manual page.</para>

    <para>Kernel support for M:N threading has been removed.  While
      the KSE (Kernel Scheduled Entities) project was quite successful
      in bringing threading to FreeBSD, the M:N approach taken by the
      kse library was never developed to its full potential.
      Backwards compatibility for applications using KSE threading
      will be provided via &man.libmap.conf.5; for dynamically linked
      binaries.</para>

    <para>The &os; kernel now exports information about certain kernel
      features via the <varname>kern.features</varname> sysctl tree.
      The &man.feature.present.3; library call provides a convenient
      interface for user applications to test the presence of
      features.</para>

    <para arch="amd64">The &os; kernel now has support for large
      memory page mappings (<quote>superpages</quote>).</para>

    <para arch="amd64,i386,ia64,powerpc" role="merged">The ULE
      scheduler is now the default process scheduler
      in <filename>GENERIC</filename> kernels.</para>

    <sect3 id="boot">
      <title>Boot Loader Changes</title>

      <para arch="amd64,i386" role="merged">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 &os; from USB
	devices.</para>

      <para arch="amd64,i386" role="merged">A new gptboot boot loader has
        been added to support booting from a GPT labeled disk.  A
        new <command>boot</command> command has been added to
        &man.gpt.8;, which makes a GPT disk bootable by writing the
        required bits of the boot loader, creating a new boot
        partition if required.</para>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="proc">
      <title>Hardware Support</title>

      <para role="merged">The &man.cmx.4; driver, a driver for Omnikey CardMan 4040
        PCMCIA smartcard readers, has been added.</para>

      <para role="merged">The &man.uslcom.4; driver, a driver for Silicon
        Laboratories CP2101/CP2102-based USB serial adapters, has been
        imported from OpenBSD.</para>

      <sect4 id="mm">
	<title>Multimedia Support</title>

	<para></para>

      </sect4>

      <sect4 id="net-if">
	<title>Network Interface Support</title>

	<para>The &man.em.4; driver has been split into two drivers
	  with some common parts.  The &man.em.4; driver will continue
	  to support adapters up to the 82575, as well as new
	  client/desktop adapters.  A new igb driver
	  will support new server adapters.</para>

	<para>The &man.malo.4; driver has been added to provide
	  support for Marvell Libertas 88W8335 based PCI network
	  adapters.</para>

	<para>The firmware for the &man.mxge.4; driver has been
	  updated from 1.4.25 to 1.4.29.</para>

	<para>The &man.sf.4; driver has been overhauled to improve its
	  performance and to add support for checksum offloading.  It
	  should also work on all architectures.</para>

	<para>The &man.re.4; driver has been overhauled to fix a
	  number of issues.  This driver now has Wake On LAN (WOL)
	  support.</para>

	<para>The &man.vr.4; driver has been overhauled to fix a
	  number of outstanding issues.  It also now works on all
	  architectures.</para>

	<para arch="amd64,i386" role="merged">The &man.wpi.4; driver has
	  been updated to include a number of stability fixes.</para>

      </sect4>
    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="net-proto">
      <title>Network Protocols</title>

      <para>The &man.bpf.4; packet filter and capture facility now
        supports a zero-copy mode of operation, in which buffers are
        loaned from a user process to the kernel.  This feature can
        be enabled by setting
        the <varname>net.bpf.zerocopy_enable</varname> sysctl
        variable to <literal>1</literal>.</para>

      <para role="merged">A bug in TCP options padding, where the wrong padding
        bytes were used, has been fixed.</para>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="disks">
      <title>Disks and Storage</title>

      <para role="merged">The &man.aac.4; driver now supports volumes larger than
        2TB in size.</para>

      <para>The &man.ata.4; driver now supports a spindown command for
        disks; after a configurable amount of time, if no requests
        have been received for a disk, the disk will be spun down
        until the next request.  The &man.atacontrol.8; utility now
        supports a <command>spindown</command> command to configure
        this feature.</para>

      <para role="merged">The &man.hptrr.4; driver has been updated to version 1.2
        from Highpoint.</para>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="fs">
      <title>File Systems</title>

      <para>A problem with using &man.mmap.2; on ZFS filesystems has
        been fixed.</para>

      <para>A new kernel-mode NFS lock manager has been added,
        improving performance and behavior of NFS locking.  A new
        &man.clear.locks.8; command has been added to clear locks held
        on behalf of an NFS client.</para>

    </sect3>
  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="userland">
    <title>Userland Changes</title>

    <para role="merged">The &man.adduser.8; utility now supports
      a <option>-M</option> option to set the mode of a new user's
      home directory.</para>

    <para>BSD-licensed versions of &man.ar.1; and &man.ranlib.1;,
      based on <filename>libarchive</filename>, have replaced the GNU
      Binutils versions of these utilities.</para>

    <para role="merged">&man.chflags.1; now supports a <option>-v</option> flag for
      verbose output and a <option>-f</option> flag to ignore errors
      with the same semantics as (for example)
      &man.chmod.1;.</para>

    <para>For compatiblity with other implementations, &man.cp.1; now
      supports a <option>-a</option> flag, which is equivalent to
      specifying the <option>-RrP</option> flags.</para>

    <para>The &man.env.1; program now supports <option>-u
      <replaceable>name</replaceable></option>
      which will completely unset the given variable
      <replaceable>name</replaceable> by removing it from the environment,
      instead of just setting it to a null value.</para>

    <para>The &man.fdopendir.3; library function has been added.</para>

    <para>&man.find.1; has been enhanced by the addition of a number
      of primaries that were present in GNU find but not &os;
      &man.find.1;.</para>

    <para>&man.kgdb.1; now supports a new <command>add-kld</command>
      command to make it easier to debug crash dumps with kernel
      modules.</para>

    <para>The &man.ls.1; program now supports a <option>-D</option>
      option to specify a date format string to be used with the long
      format (<option>-l</option>) output.</para>

    <para>&man.nc.1; now supports a <option>-O</option> switch to
      disable the use of TCP options.</para>

    <para>The &man.procstat.1; utility has been added to display
      detailed information about processes.</para>

    <para role="merged">The &man.realpath.1; utility now supports
      a <option>-q</option> flag to suppress warnings; it now also
      accepts multiple paths on its command line.</para>

    <para>The &man.split.1; utility now supports a <option>-n</option>
      flag to split a file into a certain number of chunks.</para>

    <para>The &man.tar.1; utility now supports a <option>-Z</option>
      flag to enable &man.compress.1;-style
      compression/decompression.</para>

    <para>The &man.tcgetsid.3; library function has been added to
      return the process group ID for the session leader for the
      controlling terminal.  It is defined in IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
      (POSIX).</para>

    <para>&man.top.1; now supports a <option>-P</option> flag to
      provide per-CPU usage statistics.</para>

    <para>&man.traceroute.8; now has the ability to print the AS
      number for each hop with the new <option>-a</option> switch; a
      new <option>-A</option> option allows selecting a particular
      WHOIS server.</para>

    <para>&man.traceroute6.8; now supports a <option>-U</option> flag
      to send probe packets with no upper-layer protocol, rather than
      the usual UDP probe packets.</para>

    <sect3 id="rc-scripts">
      <title><filename>/etc/rc.d</filename> Scripts</title>

      <para></para>

    </sect3>
  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="contrib">
    <title>Contributed Software</title>

    <para role="merged"><application>AMD</application> has been updated from 6.0.10
      to 6.1.5.</para>

    <para role="merged"><application>awk</application> has been updated from 1 May
      2007 release to the 23 October 2007 release.</para>

    <para role="merged"><application>bzip2</application> has been updated from 1.0.4
      to 1.0.5.</para>

    <para><application>CVS</application> has been updated from 1.11.17
      to a post-1.11.22 snapshot from 10 March 2008.</para>

    <para><application>hostapd</application> has been
      updated from 0.5.8 to 0.5.10.</para>

    <para><application>IPFilter</application> has been updated from
      4.1.23 to 4.1.28.</para>

    <para><application>less</application> has been updated from
      v408 to v416.</para>

    <para><application>ncurses</application> has been updated from
      5.6-20061217 to 5.6-20080209.</para>

    <para role="merged"><application>OpenPAM</application> has been updated from the
      Figwort release to the Hydrangea release.</para>

    <para role="merged"><application>sendmail</application> has been updated from
      8.14.1 to 8.14.2.</para>

    <para role="merged">The timezone database has been updated from
      the <application>tzdata2007h</application> release to
      the <application>tzdata2008b</application> release.</para>

    <para><application>WPA Supplicant</application> has been
      updated from 0.5.8 to 0.5.10.</para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="ports">
    <title>Ports/Packages Collection Infrastructure</title>

    <para>The pkg_sign and pkg_check utilities for cryptographically
      signing &os; packages have been removed.  They were only useful
      for packages compressed using &man.gzip.1;; however
      &man.bzip2.1; compression has been the norm for some time
      now.</para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="releng">
    <title>Release Engineering and Integration</title>

    <para role="merged">The supported version of
      the <application>GNOME</application> desktop environment
      (<filename role="package">x11/gnome2</filename>) has been
      updated from 2.20.1 to 2.22.</para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="doc">
    <title>Documentation</title>

    <para></para>

  </sect2>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="upgrade">
  <title>Upgrading from previous releases of &os;</title>

  <para arch="amd64,i386">Beginning with &os; 6.2-RELEASE,
    binary upgrades between RELEASE versions (and snapshots of the
    various security branches) are supported using the
    &man.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 &os; release.
    The &man.freebsd-update.8; utility requires that the host being
    upgraded have Internet connectivity.</para>

  <para>An older form of binary upgrade is supported through the
    <command>Upgrade</command> option from the main &man.sysinstall.8;
    menu on CDROM distribution media.  This type of binary upgrade
    may be useful on non-&arch.i386;, non-&arch.amd64; machines
    or on systems with no Internet connectivity.</para>

  <para>Source-based upgrades (those based on recompiling the &os;
    base system from source code) from previous versions are
    supported, according to the instructions in
    <filename>/usr/src/UPDATING</filename>.</para>

  <important>
    <para>Upgrading &os; should, of course, only be attempted after
      backing up <emphasis>all</emphasis> data and configuration
      files.</para>
  </important>
</sect1>
</article>