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FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE Announcement

Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 17:01:58 -0400
From: Ken Smith <kensmith@FreeBSD.org>
To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org
Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE Announcement

The Release Engineering Team is happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE, the latest release of the FreeBSD Stable development branch. Since FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE in November 2004 we have made many improvements in functionality, stability, performance, and device driver support for some hardware, as well as dealt with known security issues and made many bugfixes.

For a complete list of new features, known problems, and late-breaking news, please see the release notes and errata list, available here:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.4R/relnotes.html

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.4R/errata.html

FreeBSD 5.4 will become an "Errata Branch". In addition to Security fixes other well-tested fixes to basic functionality will be committed to the RELENG_5_4 branch after the release. Both Security Advisories and Errata Notices are announced on the freebsd-announce@freebsd.org mailing list.

It is expected there will be at least one more release from the RELENG_5 branch, most likely two. The current plans are for the RELENG_6 branch to be created within the next few months, and an initial 6.0-RELEASE will be made a few months afterwards. There will be a 5.5-RELEASE following a few months after the 6.0-RELEASE.

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/

Dedication

The FreeBSD 5.4 Release is dedicated to the memory of Cameron Grant. Cameron was an active FreeBSD Developer and principal architect of the sound driver subsystem despite his physical handicap. His is a superb example of human spirit dominating over adversity. Cameron was an inspiration to those who met him; he will be fondly remembered and sorely missed.

Availability

FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE supports the i386, amd64, ia64, pc98, sparc64, and alpha architectures and can be installed directly over the net, using bootable media, or copied to a local NFS/FTP server. Distributions for all architectures except alpha are available now. The distribution for alpha should become available within the next day or two.

Please continue to support the FreeBSD Project by purchasing media from one of our supporting vendors. The following companies will be offering FreeBSD 5.4 based products:

If you can not afford FreeBSD on media, are impatient, or just want to use it for evangelism purposes, then by all means download the ISO images. We can not promise that all the mirror sites will carry the larger ISO images. At the time of this announcement they are available from the following sites. MD5 checksums for the release images are included at the bottom of this message.

Bittorrent

As with the 5.3 release we are experimenting with Bittorrent. A collection of trackers for the release ISO images is available at

http://people.freebsd.org/~kensmith/5.4-torrent/

FTP

At the time of this announcement the following FTP sites have FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE available.

FreeBSD is also available via anonymous FTP from mirror sites in the following countries and territories: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Before trying the central FTP site, please check your regional mirror(s) first by going to:

ftp://ftp.<yourdomain>.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD

Any additional mirror sites will be labeled ftp2, ftp3 and so on.

More information about FreeBSD mirror sites can be found at:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html

For instructions on installing FreeBSD, please see Chapter 2 of The FreeBSD Handbook. It provides a complete installation walk-through for users new to FreeBSD, and can be found online at:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html

Acknowledgments

The FreeBSD Developers deserve the most thanks. Without their efforts FreeBSD would not exist.

Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to finance the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 5.4 including The FreeBSD Mall, Hewlett Packard, Yahoo!, Sentex Communications, Sandvine, Inc., FreeBSD Systems, Inc, and NTT/Verio.

The release engineering team for 5.4-RELEASE includes:

Scott Long <scottl@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering
Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering, Security
John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering
Ken Smith <kensmith@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering, amd64, i386, sparc64 Release Building, Mirror Site Coordination
Hiroki Sato <hrs@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering, Documentation
Doug White <dwhite@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering
Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering, Documentation
Wilko Bulte <wilko@FreeBSD.org> Alpha Release Building
Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@FreeBSD.org> ia64 Release Building
Takahashi Yoshihiro <nyan@FreeBSD.org> pc98 Release Building
Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org> Package Building
Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus@FreeBSD.org> Package Building
Jacques A. Vidrine <nectar@FreeBSD.org> Security Officer
Paul Saab <ps@FreeBSD.org> Bittorrent Coordination

CD Image Checksums

  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso) = 6882dd5ce59cda1ba4a66ef45f017597
  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso) = 26bca75d799c0a1690c6ae0bf0886234
  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-amd64-disc2.iso) = 3da9debeae15a49158b01b1d92843fbc

  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso) = 2afe65af7e7b994c3ce87cefda27352e
  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso) = 3dbb37485535e129354bc099e24aed99
  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso) = e4b748415ca783fce64cfafd6bd56f57

  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-ia64-bootonly.iso) = 45b032bf952e7ea8b2c42f94c3fa4997
  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-ia64-disc1.iso) = 2b1ad22da2ea0fe86345c99590049ebd
  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-ia64-disc2.iso) = 62e589928628453f1813db7402b4f3ad
  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-ia64-livefs.iso) = 6c05d71c36d84179923668faddf58e43

  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-pc98-disc1.iso) = 003dee8647e9b2cbca7df0d92011800f

  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-sparc64-bootonly.iso) = 91cb2304c2ecbcce0b312738649ba88d
  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-sparc64-disc1.iso) = 5f77c9a20e09d5ef66fad9c60e17c2ac
  MD5 (5.4-RELEASE-sparc64-disc2.iso) = 7da34a32ca8196a34732548fe92d71e6