=== Platform specifics for alpha RELEASE NOTES FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE Any installation failures or crashes should be reported by using the send-pr command (those preferring a Web-based interface can also see http://www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html). For information about FreeBSD and the layout of the 4.2-RELEASE directory (especially if you're installing from floppies!), see ABOUT.TXT. For installation instructions, see the INSTALL.TXT and HARDWARE.TXT files. For the latest 4-stable snapshot, you should always see: ftp://releng4.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD Table of contents: ------------------ 1. What's new since 4.1-RELEASE 1.1 KERNEL CHANGES 1.2 SECURITY FIXES 1.3 USERLAND CHANGES 2. Supported Configurations 2.1 Disk Controllers 2.2 Ethernet cards 2.3 FDDI 2.4 ATM 2.5 Misc 3. Obtaining FreeBSD 3.1 FTP/Mail 3.2 CDROM 4. Upgrading from previous releases of FreeBSD 5. Reporting problems, making suggestions, submitting code 6. Acknowledgements 1. What's new since 4.1-RELEASE -------------------------------------- Changes which were also present in the 4.1.1 point release will be marked [4.1.1]. 1.1. KERNEL CHANGES ------------------- The tap driver, a virtual Ethernet device driver for bridged configurations, has been added. [4.1.1] accept_filters, a kernel feature to reduce overheads when accepting and reading new connections on listening sockets, has been added. [4.1.1] POSIX.1b Shared Memory Objects are now supported. The implementation uses regular files, but automatically enables the MAP_NOSYNC flag when they are mmap(2)ed. [4.1.1] The ata(4) driver now has support for ATA100 controllers. [4.1.1] The ata(4) driver now has support for tagged queueing, which is enabled by the ATA_ENABLE_TAGS option. It also supports the ServerWorks ROSB4 ATA33 chipset, the CMD 648 ATA66 and CMD 649 ATA100 chipsets, and the Cyrix 5530. It also has support for ATA "pseudo" RAID controllers, including the Promise Fasttrak and HighPoint HPT370 controllers. The ti(4) driver now supports the Alteon AceNIC 1000baseT Gigabit Ethernet and Netgear GA620T 1000baseT Gigabit Ethernet cards. [4.1.1] The ng_bridge(4) node type has been added to the netgraph subsystem. Miscellaneous bug fixes and enhancements have also been made. [4.1.1] AlphaServer 1200 ("Tincup") has been tested and works OK. Currently it does not want to boot from CD or floppy but a transplanted disk that was installed on another Alpha works well. [4.1.1] The pcn(4) driver, which supports the AMD PCnet/FAST, PCnet/FAST+, PCnet/FAST III, PCnet/PRO, PCnet/Home, and HomePNA adapters, has been added. Although these cards are already supported by the lnc(4) driver, the pcn driver runs these chips in 32-bit mode and uses the RX alignment feature to achieve zero-copy receive. This driver is also machine-independent, so it will work on both the i386 and alpha platforms. The lnc driver is still needed to support non-PCI cards. The pcm(4) driver now supports the ESS Solo 1, Maestro-1, Maestro-2, and Maestro-2e; Forte Media fm801, ESS Maestro-2e, and VIA Technologies VT82C686A sound card/chipsets, and has received some other updates. Replace the PQ_*CACHE options with a single PQ_CACHESIZE option to be set to the cache size in kilobytes. The old options are still supported for backwards compatibility. The ahc(4) driver has been updated. AlphaServer 2100A 'Lynx' support has not been finalised and Lynx is therefore not yet supported. bktr(4) driver update to 2.15. New tuner types have been added, and improvememts to the KLD module and to memory allocation have been made. [4.1.1] This driver subsequently was updated to 2.17, which fixes bugs in devfs when unloading and reloading, and syncs with some NetBSD changes. SCSI cdrom drives driven by the isp(4) driver may fail to attach to the cd(4) driver during boot. This problem has been observed with both DEC RRD4x and Toshiba CDROM drives, but could affect other brands as well. Workaround is to leave a CD in the drive during boot or 'camcontrol rescan'. CDROM drives attached to other non-isp adapters are not affected. AlphaServer 8[24]00 'TurboLaser' support might be problematic. This depends on your specific hardware configuration. The problem originates in the support for multi-hose machines which is currently not always working. Typically the problem manifests itself as: "panic: hose encoding hack would clobber base address" during boot. You might try to work around it by reconfiguring your machine. There is no clear recipe for this, as the problem is triggered by the way the SRM console sets up the machine. In addition, booting from an installation CD does not work. A transplanted disk that was installed on another Alpha is the workaround for this. AlphaServer 4[01]00 does not want to boot from CD or floppy but a transplanted disk that was installed on another Alpha works. 1.2. SECURITY FIXES ------------------- sysinstall(8) now allows the user to select one of three "security profiles" at install-time. These profiles enable different levels of system security by enabling or disabling various system services in rc.conf(5) on new installs. [4.1.1] Many string-handling library calls were fixed to reduce the possibility of buffer overflow-related exploits. A security hole in Linux emulation was fixed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-00:42). [4.1.1] TCP now uses stronger randomness in choosing its initial sequence numbers (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-00:52). A bug in finger(1) that could allow remote users to view world-readable files has been closed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-00:54). rlogind(8), rshd(8), and fingerd(8) are now disabled by default in /etc/inetd.conf. This change only affects new installations. Several buffer overflows in tcpdump(1) were corrected (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-00:61). A security hole in top(1) was corrected (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-00:62). A potential security hole caused by an off-by-one-error in gethostbyname(3) has been fixed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-00:63). A potential buffer overflow in the ncurses(3X) library, which could cause arbitrary code to be run from within systat(1), has been corrected (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-00:68). A vulnerability in telnetd(8) that could cause it to consume large amounts of server resources has been fixed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-00:69). The "nat deny_incoming" command in ppp(8) now works correctly (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-00:70). 1.3. USERLAND CHANGES --------------------- RSA Security has waived all patent rights to the RSA algorithm (two weeks before the patent was due to expire). As a result, the native OpenSSL implementation of the RSA algorithm is now activated by default, and the rsaref port and librsaUSA are no longer required for USA residents. [4.1.1] sshd is now enabled by default on new installs. [4.1.1] Version numbers of installed packages have a new (backward-compatible) syntax, which supports the "PORTREVISION" and "PORTEPOCH" variables in ports collection makefiles. These changes help keep track of changes in the ports collection entries such as security patches or FreeBSD-specific updates, which aren't reflected in the original, third-party software distributions. pkg_version(1) can now compare these new-style version numbers. [4.1.1] sendmail upgraded from version 8.9.3 to version 8.11.1. Important changes include: new default file locations (see /usr/src/contrib/sendmail/cf/README); newaliases is limited to root and trusted users; STARTTLS encryption; and the MSA port (587) is turned on by default. See /usr/src/contrib/sendmail/RELEASE_NOTES for more information. mail.local(8) is no longer installed as a set-user-id binary. If you are using a /etc/mail/sendmail.cf from the default sendmail.cf included with FreeBSD any time after 3.1.0, you are fine. If you are using a hand-configured sendmail.cf and mail.local for delivery, check to make sure the F=S flag is set on the Mlocal line. Those with .mc files who need to add the flag can do so by adding the following line to their your .mc file and regenerating the sendmail.cf file: MODIFY_MAILER_FLAGS(`LOCAL', `+S')dnl Note that FEATURE(`local_lmtp') already does this. The default /etc/mail/sendmail.cf disables the SMTP EXPN and VRFY commands. vacation(1) has been updated to use the version included with sendmail. The sendmail(8) configuration building tools are installed in /usr/share/sendmail/cf/. OpenSSH has been upgraded to 2.2.0. ssh-add(1) and ssh-agent(1) can now handle DSA keys. An sftp server interoperable with ssh.com clients and others has been added. scp(1) can now handle files >2GB. Interoperability with other ssh2 clients/servers has been improved. A new feature to limit the number of outstanding unauthenticated ssh connections in sshd has been added. The compiler chain now uses the FSF-supplied C/C++ runtime initialization code. This change brings about better compatibility with code generated from the various egcs and gcc ports, as well as the stock public FSF source. cvs(1) has been updated to 1.11. The threads library has gained some signal handling changes, bug fixes, and performance enhancements (including zero system call thread switching). gdb(1) thread support has been updated to match these changes. GDB now supports hardware watchpoints. [4.1.1] routed(8) has been updated to version 2.22. [4.1.1] The truncate(1) utility, which truncates or extends the length of files, has been added. [4.1.1] syslogd(8) can take a -n option to disable DNS queries for every request. [4.1.1] kenv(1), a command to dump the kernel environment, has been added. [4.1.1] The behavior of periodic(8) is now controlled by /etc/defaults/periodic.conf and /etc/periodic.conf. [4.1.1] logger(1) can now send messages directly to a remote syslog. [4.1.1] OpenSSL has been upgraded to 0.9.5a, which includes numerous bugfixes and enhancements. [4.1.1] finger(1) now has the ability to support fingering aliases, via the finger.conf(5) file. [4.1.1] The xl(4) driver now supports the 3Com 3C556 and 3C556B MiniPCI adapters used on some laptops. [4.1.1] killall(1) is now a C program, rather than a Perl script. As a result, killall's -m option now uses the regular expression syntax of regex(3), rather than that of perl(1). [4.1.1] boot98cfg(8), a PC-98 boot manager installation and configuration utility, has been added. [4.1.1] The ifconfig(8) command can set the link-layer address of an interface. [4.1.1] setproctitle(3) has been moved from libutil to libc. [4.1.1] sed(1) now takes a -E option for extended regular expression support. [4.1.1] ln(1) now takes an -i option to request user configuration before overwriting an existing file. [4.1.1] tcpdump(1) has received some updates and bugfixes. User-land ppp(8) has received a number of updates and bugfixes. The internal procedure for building perl has changed, and no longer depends on (nor installs) miniperl. Users upgrading from source should delete /usr/bin/miniperl. To improve performance and disk utilization, the "ports skeletons" in the FreeBSD Ports Collection have been restructured. Installed ports and packages should not be affected. ncurses has been updated to ncurses-5.1-20001009. make(1) has gained the :C/// (regexp substitution), :L (lowercase), and :U (uppercase) variable modifiers. These were added to reduce the differences between the FreeBSD and OpenBSD/NetBSD make programs. The "in use" percentage metric displayed by netstat(1) now really reflects the percentage of network mbufs used. chio(1) now has the ability to specify elements by volume tag instead of by their physical location as well as the ability to return an element to its previous location. The ISC library from the BIND distribution is now built as libisc. IP Filter is now supported by the rc.conf(5) boot-time configuration and initialization. 2. Supported Configurations --------------------------- For an extensive overview of supported Alpha machines/mainboards please refer to the HARDWARE.TXT file. Information in that file reflects the latest state of affairs for Alpha machines/mainboards. 2.1. Disk Controllers --------------------- IDE ATA Adaptec AIC7850, AIC7860, AIC7880, AIC789x, on-board SCSI controllers. AdvanSys SCSI controllers (all models). BusLogic MultiMaster controllers: [ Please note that BusLogic/Mylex "Flashpoint" adapters are NOT yet supported ] BusLogic MultiMaster "W" Series Host Adapters: BT-948, BT-958, BT-958D BusLogic MultiMaster "C" Series Host Adapters: BT-946C, BT-956C, BT-956CD, BT-445C, BT-747C, BT-757C, BT-757CD, BT-545C, BT-540CF BusLogic MultiMaster "S" Series Host Adapters: BT-445S, BT-747S, BT-747D, BT-757S, BT-757D, BT-545S, BT-542D, BT-742A, BT-542B BusLogic MultiMaster "A" Series Host Adapters: BT-742A, BT-542B AMI FastDisk controllers that are true BusLogic MultiMaster clones are also supported. DPT SmartCACHE Plus, SmartCACHE III, SmartRAID III, SmartCACHE IV and SmartRAID IV SCSI/RAID controllers are supported. The DPT SmartRAID/CACHE V is not yet supported. AMI MegaRAID Express and Enterprise family RAID controllers: MegaRAID 418 MegaRAID Enterprise 1200 (428) MegaRAID Enterprise 1300 MegaRAID Enterprise 1400 A MegaRAID Enterprise 1500 MegaRAID Elite 1500 MegaRAID Express 200 MegaRAID Express 300 Dell PERC Dell PERC 2/SC Dell PERC 2/DC Some HP NetRAID controllers are OEM versions of AMI designs, and these are also supported. Booting from these controllers is supported, but not possible due to SRM limitations. Mylex DAC960 and DAC1100 RAID controllers with 2.x, 3.x, 4.x and 5.x firmware: DAC960P DAC960PD DAC960PDU DAC960PL DAC960PJ DAC960PG AcceleRAID 150 AcceleRAID 250 eXtremeRAID 1100 This list includes controllers sold by Digital/Compaq in Alpha systems in the StorageWorks family, eg. KZPSC, KZPAC. Booting from these controllers is supported when recognised by SRM (typically Digital/ Compaq models only, and only in systems where they are supported). EISA adapters like the StorageWorks KZESC are not supported. SymBios (formerly NCR) 53C810, 53C810a, 53C815, 53C820, 53C825a, 53C860, 53C875, 53C875j, 53C885, 53C895 and 53C896 PCI SCSI controllers: ASUS SC-200 Data Technology DTC3130 (all variants) Diamond FirePort (all) NCR cards (all) Symbios cards (all) Tekram DC390W, 390U and 390F Tyan S1365 Symbios boot support depends on your SRM / machine type. Check HARDWARE.TXT too. QLogic 1020, 1040, 1040B, 1080 and 1240 SCSI Host Adapters. QLogic 2100 Fibre Channel Adapters (private loop only). With all supported SCSI controllers, full support is provided for SCSI-I & SCSI-II peripherals, including hard disks, optical disks, tape drives (including DAT and 8mm Exabyte), medium changers, processor target devices and CDROM drives. WORM devices that support CDROM commands are supported for read-only access by the CDROM driver. WORM/CD-R/CD-RW writing support is provided by cdrecord, which is in the ports tree. The following CD-ROM type systems are supported at this time: (cd) SCSI interface (also includes ProAudio Spectrum and SoundBlaster SCSI) (acd) ATAPI IDE interface 2.2. Ethernet cards ------------------- Adaptec Duralink PCI Fast Ethernet adapters based on the Adaptec AIC-6915 Fast Ethernet controller chip, including the following: ANA-62011 64-bit single port 10/100baseTX adapter ANA-62022 64-bit dual port 10/100baseTX adapter ANA-62044 64-bit quad port 10/100baseTX adapter ANA-69011 32-bit single port 10/100baseTX adapter ANA-62020 64-bit single port 100baseFX adapter Allied-Telesis AT1700 and RE2000 cards Alteon Networks PCI Gigabit Ethernet NICs based on the Tigon 1 and Tigon 2 chipsets, including the following: 3Com 3c985-SX (Tigon 1 and 2) Alteon AceNIC 1000baseSX(Tigon 1 and 2) Alteon AceNIC 1000baseT (Tigon 2) DEC/Compaq EtherWORKS 1000 Farallon PN9000SX NEC Gigabit Ethernet Netgear GA620 (Tigon 2) Netgear GA620T (Tigon 2, 1000baseT) Silicon Graphics Gigabit Ethernet AMD PCnet/PCI (79c970 & 53c974 or 79c974) AMD PCnet/FAST, PCnet/FAST+, PCnet/FAST III, PCnet/PRO, PCnet/Home, and HomePNA. SMC Elite 16 WD8013 Ethernet interface, and most other WD8003E, WD8003EBT, WD8003W, WD8013W, WD8003S, WD8003SBT and WD8013EBT based clones. SMC Elite Ultra. SMC Etherpower II. RealTek 8129/8139 Fast Ethernet NICs including the following: Allied Telesyn AT2550 Allied Telesyn AT2500TX Genius GF100TXR (RTL8139) NDC Communications NE100TX-E OvisLink LEF-8129TX OvisLink LEF-8139TX Netronix Inc. EA-1210 NetEther 10/100 KTX-9130TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet Accton "Cheetah" EN1027D (MPX 5030/5038; RealTek 8139 clone?) SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI 1211-TX Lite-On 82c168/82c169 PNIC Fast Ethernet NICs including the following: LinkSys EtherFast LNE100TX NetGear FA310-TX Rev. D1 Matrox FastNIC 10/100 Kingston KNE110TX Macronix 98713, 98713A, 98715, 98715A and 98725 Fast Ethernet NICs NDC Communications SFA100A (98713A) CNet Pro120A (98713 or 98713A) CNet Pro120B (98715) SVEC PN102TX (98713) Macronix/Lite-On PNIC II LC82C115 Fast Ethernet NICs including the following: LinkSys EtherFast LNE100TX Version 2 Winbond W89C840F Fast Ethernet NICs including the following: Trendware TE100-PCIE VIA Technologies VT3043 "Rhine I" and VT86C100A "Rhine II" Fast Ethernet NICs including the following: Hawking Technologies PN102TX D-Link DFE-530TX AOpen/Acer ALN-320 Silicon Integrated Systems SiS 900 and SiS 7016 PCI Fast Ethernet NICs Sundance Technologies ST201 PCI Fast Ethernet NICs including the following: D-Link DFE-550TX SysKonnect SK-984x PCI Gigabit Ethernet cards including the following: SK-9841 1000baseLX single mode fiber, single port SK-9842 1000baseSX multimode fiber, single port SK-9843 1000baseLX single mode fiber, dual port SK-9844 1000baseSX multimode fiber, dual port Texas Instruments ThunderLAN PCI NICs, including the following: Compaq Netelligent 10, 10/100, 10/100 Proliant, 10/100 Dual-Port Compaq Netelligent 10/100 TX Embedded UTP, 10 T PCI UTP/Coax, 10/100 TX UTP Compaq NetFlex 3P, 3P Integrated, 3P w/ BNC Olicom OC-2135/2138, OC-2325, OC-2326 10/100 TX UTP Racore 8165 10/100baseTX Racore 8148 10baseT/100baseTX/100baseFX multi-personality ADMtek Inc. AL981-based PCI Fast Ethernet NICs ADMtek Inc. AN985-based PCI Fast Ethernet NICs ADMtek Inc. AN986-based USB Ethernet NICs including the following: LinkSys USB100TX Billionton USB100 Melco Inc. LUA-TX D-Link DSB-650TX SMC 2202USB CATC USB-EL1210A-based USB Ethernet NICs including the following: CATC Netmate CATC Netmate II Belkin F5U111 Kawasaki LSI KU5KUSB101B-based USB Ethernet NICs including the following: LinkSys USB10T Entrega NET-USB-E45 Peracom USB Ethernet Adapter 3Com 3c19250 ADS Technologies USB-10BT ATen UC10T Netgear EA101 D-Link DSB-650 SMC 2102USB SMC 2104USB Corega USB-T ASIX Electronics AX88140A PCI NICs, including the following: Alfa Inc. GFC2204 CNet Pro110B DEC EtherWORKS III NICs (DE203, DE204, and DE205) DEC EtherWORKS II NICs (DE200, DE201, DE202, and DE422) DEC DC21040, DC21041, or DC21140 based NICs (SMC Etherpower 8432T, DE245, etc) Davicom DM9100 and DM9102 PCI Fast Ethernet NICs, including the following: Jaton Corporation XpressNet Fujitsu MB86960A/MB86965A HP PC Lan+ cards (model numbers: 27247B and 27252A). Intel EtherExpress 16 Intel EtherExpress Pro/10 Intel EtherExpress Pro/100B PCI Fast Ethernet Isolan AT 4141-0 (16 bit) Isolink 4110 (8 bit) 3Com 3C501 cards 3Com 3C503 Etherlink II 3Com 3c505 Etherlink/+ 3Com 3C507 Etherlink 16/TP 3Com 3C509, 3C579, 3C589 (PCMCIA), 3C590/592/595/900/905/905B/905C PCI (Fast) Etherlink III / (Fast) Etherlink XL 3Com 3c980/3c980B Fast Etherlink XL server adapter 3Com 3cSOHO100-TX OfficeConnect adapter Toshiba Ethernet cards Crystal Semiconductor CS89x0-based NICs, including: IBM Etherjet ISA Note that NO token ring cards are supported at this time as we're still waiting for someone to donate a driver for one of them. Any takers? 2.3. FDDI --------- - none (DEFPA is currently broken) 2.4. ATM -------- o ATM Host Interfaces - FORE Systems, Inc. PCA-200E ATM PCI Adapters - Efficient Networks, Inc. ENI-155p ATM PCI Adapters o ATM Signalling Protocols - The ATM Forum UNI 3.1 signalling protocol - The ATM Forum UNI 3.0 signalling protocol - The ATM Forum ILMI address registration - FORE Systems's proprietary SPANS signalling protocol - Permanent Virtual Channels (PVCs) o IETF "Classical IP and ARP over ATM" model - RFC 1483, "Multiprotocol Encapsulation over ATM Adaptation Layer 5" - RFC 1577, "Classical IP and ARP over ATM" - RFC 1626, "Default IP MTU for use over ATM AAL5" - RFC 1755, "ATM Signaling Support for IP over ATM" - RFC 2225, "Classical IP and ARP over ATM" - RFC 2334, "Server Cache Synchronization Protocol (SCSP)" - Internet Draft draft-ietf-ion-scsp-atmarp-00.txt, "A Distributed ATMARP Service Using SCSP" o ATM Sockets interface 2.5. Misc --------- AST 4 port serial card using shared IRQ. ARNET 8 port serial card using shared IRQ. ARNET (now Digiboard) Sync 570/i high-speed serial. Boca BB1004 4-Port serial card (Modems NOT supported) Boca IOAT66 6-Port serial card (Modems supported) Boca BB1008 8-Port serial card (Modems NOT supported) Boca BB2016 16-Port serial card (Modems supported) Comtrol Rocketport card. Cyclades Cyclom-y Serial Board. STB 4 port card using shared IRQ. SDL Communications Riscom/8 Serial Board. SDL Communications RISCom/N2 and N2pci high-speed sync serial boards. Stallion multiport serial boards: EasyIO, EasyConnection 8/32 & 8/64, ONboard 4/16 and Brumby. Specialix SI/XIO/SX ISA, PCI serial expansion cards/modules. Adlib, SoundBlaster, SoundBlaster Pro, ProAudioSpectrum, Gravis UltraSound and Roland MPU-401 sound cards. (snd driver) Advance Asound 100, 110 and Logic ALS120 Crystal Semiconductor CS461x/462x/428x ENSONIQ AudioPCI ES1370/1371 ESS ES1868, ES1869, ES1879 and ES1888 ESS Maestro-1, Maestro-2, and Maestro-2E ForteMedia fm801 Gravis UltraSound MAX/PnP MSS/WSS Compatible DSPs NeoMagic 256AV/ZX OPTi 931/82C931 SoundBlaster, Soundblaster Pro, Soundblaster AWE-32, Soundblaster AWE-64 Trident 4DWave DX/NX VIA Technologies VT82C686A Yamaha DS1 and DS1e (newpcm driver) Connectix QuickCam Matrox Meteor Video frame grabber Creative Labs Video Spigot frame grabber Cortex1 frame grabber Hauppauge Wincast/TV boards (PCI) STB TV PCI Intel Smart Video Recorder III Various Frame grabbers based on Brooktree Bt848 / Bt878 chip. HP4020, HP6020, Philips CDD2000/CDD2660 and Plasmon CD-R drives. PS/2 mice Standard PC Joystick X-10 power controllers GPIB and Transputer drivers. Genius and Mustek hand scanners. Xilinx XC6200 based reconfigurable hardware cards compatible with the HOT1 from Virtual Computers (www.vcc.com) Support for Dave Mills experimental Loran-C receiver. Lucent Technologies WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11 ISA standard speed (2Mbps) and turbo speed (6Mbps) wireless network adapters and workalikes (NCR WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11, Cabletron RoamAbout 802.11 DS). Note: the ISA versions of these adapters are actually PCMCIA cards combined with an ISA to PCMCIA bridge card, so both kinds of devices work with the same driver. Aironet 4500/4800 series 802.11 wireless adapters. The PCI and ISA models are supported for the Alpha architecture. 3. Obtaining FreeBSD -------------------- You may obtain FreeBSD in a variety of ways: 3.1. FTP/Mail ------------- You can ftp FreeBSD and any or all of its optional packages from `ftp.freebsd.org' - the official FreeBSD release site. For other locations that mirror the FreeBSD software see the file MIRROR.SITES. Please ftp the distribution from the site closest (in networking terms) to you. Additional mirror sites are always welcome! Contact freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org for more details if you'd like to become an official mirror site. If you do not have access to the Internet and electronic mail is your only recourse, then you may still fetch the files by sending mail to `ftpmail@ftpmail.vix.com' - putting the keyword "help" in your message to get more information on how to fetch files using this mechanism. Please do note, however, that this will end up sending many *tens of megabytes* through the mail and should only be employed as an absolute LAST resort! 3.2. CDROM ---------- FreeBSD 4.x-RELEASE CDs may be ordered on CDROM from: BSDi 4041 Pike Lane, Suite F Concord CA 94520 1-800-786-9907, +1-925-674-0783, +1-925-674-0821 (FAX) Or via the Internet from orders@osd.bsdi.com or http://www.freebsdmall.com. Cost per -RELEASE CD is $39.95 or $24.95 with a FreeBSD subscription. FreeBSD SNAPshot CDs, when available, are $39.95 or $14.95 with a FreeBSD-SNAP subscription (-RELEASE and -SNAP subscriptions are entirely separate). With a subscription, you will automatically receive updates as they are released. Your credit card will be billed when each disk is shipped and you may cancel your subscription at any time without further obligation. Shipping (per order not per disc) is $5 in the US, Canada or Mexico and $9.00 overseas. They accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express or checks in U.S. Dollars and ship COD within the United States. California residents please add 8.25% sales tax. Should you be dissatisfied for any reason, the CD comes with an unconditional return policy. 4. Upgrading from previous releases of FreeBSD ---------------------------------------------- If you're upgrading from a previous release of FreeBSD, most likely it's 3.0 and there may be some issues affecting you, depending of course on your chosen method of upgrading. There are two popular ways of upgrading FreeBSD distributions: o Using sources, via /usr/src o Using sysinstall's (binary) upgrade option. Please read the UPGRADE.TXT file for more information, preferably before beginning an upgrade. 5. Reporting problems, making suggestions, submitting code. ----------------------------------------------------------- Your suggestions, bug reports and contributions of code are always valued - please do not hesitate to report any problems you may find (preferably with a fix attached, if you can!). The preferred method to submit bug reports from a machine with Internet mail connectivity is to use the send-pr command or use the CGI script at http://www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html. Bug reports will be dutifully filed by our faithful bugfiler program and you can be sure that we'll do our best to respond to all reported bugs as soon as possible. Bugs filed in this way are also visible on our WEB site in the support section and are therefore valuable both as bug reports and as "signposts" for other users concerning potential problems to watch out for. If, for some reason, you are unable to use the send-pr command to submit a bug report, you can try to send it to: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org Note that send-pr itself is a shell script that should be easy to move even onto a totally different system. We much prefer if you could use this interface, since it make it easier to keep track of the problem reports. However, before submitting, please try to make sure whether the problem might have already been fixed since. Otherwise, for any questions or tech support issues, please send mail to: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org If you're tracking the -stable development efforts, you should definitely join the -stable mailing list, in order to keep abreast of recent developments and changes that may affect the way you use and maintain the system: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org Additionally, being a volunteer effort, we are always happy to have extra hands willing to help - there are already far more desired enhancements than we'll ever be able to manage by ourselves! To contact us on technical matters, or with offers of help, please send mail to: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.org If it is not strictly Alpha related but applies to both the Intel and the Alpha port of FreeBSD please send your mail to: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Please note that these mailing lists can experience *significant* amounts of traffic and if you have slow or expensive mail access and are only interested in keeping up with significant FreeBSD events, you may find it preferable to subscribe instead to: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org All of the mailing lists can be freely joined by anyone wishing to do so. Send mail to MajorDomo@FreeBSD.org and include the keyword `help' on a line by itself somewhere in the body of the message. This will give you more information on joining the various lists, accessing archives, etc. There are a number of mailing lists targeted at special interest groups not mentioned here, so send mail to majordomo and ask about them! 6. Acknowledgements ------------------- FreeBSD represents the cumulative work of many dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals from around the world who have worked very hard to bring you this release. For a complete list of FreeBSD project staffers, please see: http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/staff.html or, if you've loaded the doc distribution: file:/usr/share/doc/handbook/staff.html Special mention to: The donors listed at http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/donors.html Justin M. Seger for almost single-handedly converting the ports collection to ELF. Doug Rabson and John Birrell for making FreeBSD/alpha happen and to the NetBSD project for substantial indirect aid. Peter Wemm for the new kernel module system (with substantial aid from Doug Rabson). And to the many thousands of FreeBSD users and testers all over the world, without whom this release simply would not have been possible. We sincerely hope you enjoy this release of FreeBSD! The FreeBSD Project $FreeBSD: src/release/texts/alpha/RELNOTES.TXT,v 1.31.2.72 2000/11/19 19:53:40 jkh Exp $