FreeBSD 9.0 Arrives w/ DTrace, Clang, ZFS Updates

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeBSD 9.0 Arrives w/ DTrace, Clang, ZFS Updates

After multiple delays spanning several months, FreeBSD 9.0 is being officially released today. While it comes late, at least there's many significant improvements...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA0MjA

[archibald]

hehe, scooped you by 20 minutes :-)

Michael, your private message inbox is full (I tried to send you a message about this).

[aragon]

Wish you had mentioned this release's dedication.

[dhewg]

"not really superior", "at least", "remain in a horrible state"?
Is this news reporting or a nerdrage blog?

BSD's main usage is on servers (that "text-based" thingy), so its completely understandable that a gfx based installer is not a high priority.
Mesa 7.11.2 was released on November 27, 2011. That one still contains the classic drivers. NVidia also ships its binary blob with the classic interface for FreeBSD. How the fuck is that a "horrible state"?

Sure, having a funky installer or gallium would be nice, but really, this kind of news reporting is already beyond annoying.

[kobblestown]

Text installers

I, for one, have always preferred text installers. However, what I would really like to have is an installer that I can use over serial line. I hate to plug the video card into my server every time I need to reinstall and then remove it to keep electricity consumption down. In fact, there may be installers that support serial line - it shouldn't be that hard. What would be really neat though is an installer to which you can connect over ssh. So you write the installer on, say, separate partionion, instruct your boot manager to boot from there and restart. Remotely. Then you connect over ssh where the installer is waiting for you. For a while I though SuSe can do that but when I tried to find information about it I failed. Does anyone know if such a thing exists - text-based installer with ssh access?

[adler187]

Does anyone know if such a thing exists - text-based installer with ssh access?

You could try http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Remote_installation or http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Network_installation for information doing remote installs of openSUSE. Supposed to support ssh, VNC, and serial console. I know I've used ssh and VNC in the past (quite some time ago). I've never used a serial console, so I can't say about this. Using the net install disk uses an ncurses version of yast and allows you to configure ssh access (or use the boot options as shown in the howto). I'm assuming one could use the boot options with the dvd installer as well(not sure about the livecd).

Since zypper dup, I haven't had to do a linux install in quite some time.

[kobblestown]

Thanks for the tip! I think it's awesome to be able to do a clean install over the network. Although, it does seem that you'll get a graphical installer as hinted by the -X option to ssh. Is there any other installer that can do it?

Apparently, the serial console install is easy and can be done at least with the debian installer and the FreeBSD installer. But one has to modify the installer image to specify the serial line for the console.

[Ibidem]

Thanks for the tip! I think it's awesome to be able to do a clean install over the network. Although, it does seem that you'll get a graphical installer as hinted by the -X option to ssh. Is there any other installer that can do it?

Apparently, the serial console install is easy and can be done at least with the debian installer and the FreeBSD installer. But one has to modify the installer image to specify the serial line for the console.

debootstrap or rinse?