From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Aug 7 08:24:48 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 90B85106564A for ; Thu, 7 Aug 2008 08:24:48 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ask@develooper.com) Received: from x8.develooper.com (x8.develooper.com [216.52.237.208]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5F1EA8FC16 for ; Thu, 7 Aug 2008 08:24:48 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ask@develooper.com) Received: (qmail 31013 invoked from network); 7 Aug 2008 07:58:07 -0000 Received: from gw.develooper.com (HELO embla.bn.dev) (ask@mail.dev@64.81.84.140) by smtp.develooper.com with (AES128-SHA encrypted) SMTP; 7 Aug 2008 07:58:07 -0000 Message-Id: <1EE0EC59-C48C-4B07-B08E-77BE388BBDE1@develooper.com> From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ask_Bj=F8rn_Hansen?= To: stable@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v928.1) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 00:58:06 -0700 X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.928.1) Cc: Subject: i386 vs amd64? X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:24:48 -0000 Hi everyone, We got 4 new SuperMicro boxes[1] with Xeon 3320 processors. They'll be used as firewalls / very basic routers (our network on one side, the world via a /29 on the other side). We currently use Soekris and PC Engine boxes for this (with custom NanoBSD images), so this will be a bit of an upgrade. :-) I was planning to install pfSense on them, but I'm losing faith in that a bit after figuring out that the pfSense project doesn't seem all that open[2]; so I'm considering just installing "plain FreeBSD 7" instead. So the question: Would I be happier with 64 or 32bit FreeBSD? Our Linux application and database servers are all 64 bit, but they also have 32GB RAM each. The "firewall boxes" are probably vastly overdone with memory at 4GB each. :-) A secondary question: Is the preferred way to upgrade a FreeBSD box still cd /usr/src; make update && make buildworld && ... ? (I mostly use FreeBSD for building my NanoBSD-flavor images these days, so I'm a bit out of touch). - ask [1] http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i15328/xeon-3000.php [2] http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,10769.0.html -- http://develooper.com/ - http://askask.com/