From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Dec 10 5:50:58 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from blackhelicopters.org (geburah.blackhelicopters.org [209.69.178.18]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14DC737B41D; Mon, 10 Dec 2001 05:50:40 -0800 (PST) Received: (from mwlucas@localhost) by blackhelicopters.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) id fBADocH29311; Mon, 10 Dec 2001 08:50:38 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from mwlucas) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 08:50:38 -0500 From: Michael Lucas To: D J Hawkey Jr Cc: Michael Lucas , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Tangent for discussion: FreeBSD performs worse that Linux Message-ID: <20011210085038.A29274@blackhelicopters.org> References: <20011209100855.A22942@sheol.localdomain> <20011209084620.V14858-100000@coredump.scriptkiddie.org> <20011209111523.A23357@sheol.localdomain> <20011209175137.B13554@clan.nothing-going-on.org> <20011209121703.A23726@sheol.localdomain> <20011209172652.A25745@blackhelicopters.org> <20011210074151.A29219@sheol.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20011210074151.A29219@sheol.localdomain>; from hawkeyd@visi.com on Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 07:41:51AM -0600 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 07:41:51AM -0600, D J Hawkey Jr wrote: > [this is a re-post; apparently my first didn't take?] Nope, we got it. As penance for re-sending, your penance is to implement the ideas discussed below. :-) > On Dec 09, at 05:26 PM, Michael Lucas wrote: > Yup. To me, too. But as I said, without some sort of barometer I can read > that tells me what's going on with -STABLE or -CURRENT that is even half- > way portable and worthwhile to previous releases, I'm afraid it'd be a > rather stale resource pretty quickly. Not necessarily. Read cvs-all. Grab interesting updates (such as the recent TCP changes) and see if they compile. Some will, some won't. If you become known as "Mr. MFS for old releases", people will start sending you sligtly modified patches based on their work, and it will take off. Or, the public will decide they aren't interested, and it won't. In either case, the next time you start a project you'll be taken far more seriously. > - They would be patches against whatever is in place on a machine > at a particluar time. If it was something-REL, they might not > apply cleanly to something-STABLE or something-HACKED. At a bare > minimum, this implies that the user/admin be well-acquainted with > the syntax of unified diffs, and the basics of "code discovery". > - After such patches are applied, how does one guard against a > subsequent 'cvsup' blowing away these "private" updates. That is, > someone applies my patch for ICH sound to their 4.3REL base. How > can that source be "protected" against a 'cvsup RELENG_4_3' > upgrade, which will overwrite those patched files? Valid concerns. You should definitely post this on the web page. > These two points alone might (should?) scare off all but the most anal > of SysAdmins. If such a resource was available (patches site), it seems > to me the target audience would be quite small, indeed. One of the things > I'm really asking (without explicitely stating so) is, "How can such a > site, more specifically, it's content, be made sufficiently painless > to install?" Hmmm... I think you're stuck with patch. If you have your patches properly arranged, however, you can make the patch very simple to install. cd /usr/src patch < /home/admin/4.1R-patchset.diff make buildkernel installkernel > I can backport to 4.2REL and 4.3REL (I have these releases), but I > don't have the resources (read: "free partitions") to accomodate 4.1 > or 4.4. Well, 4.1 is rather elderly. If you support the older ones, and make your techniques available for other people, you might well find that someone else supports 4.4 for you. Or, just keep your eyes open for a used hard drive you can scarf from somewhere. Heck, someone at work offered me a 20 gig drive for free because he'd just updated to a 120-gig drive. Unfortunately, I didn't take him up on it or I'd ship it to you, hopefully solving the hardest issue. This could take a lot of time, but I think a lot of people would thank you for it. ==ml -- Michael Lucas mwlucas@FreeBSD.org, mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org http://www.blackhelicopters.org/~mwlucas/ Big Scary Daemons: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/q/Big_Scary_Daemons To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message