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<p><b>Date:</b> Monday, 8 Apr 2002 15:00:00 -0800<br>
  <b>From:</b> "Murray Stokely" &lt;murray@FreeBSD.org&gt;<br>
  <b>To:</b> announce@FreeBSD.org<br>
  <b>Subject:</b>  FreeBSD 5.0 Developer Preview #1 Now Available</p>

<p>A Developer Preview release of FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT is now available
  for widespread testing.  This preview is a significant milestone
  towards the eventual release of FreeBSD 5.0 in late 2002.  Some of
  the many new features that are available in this snapshot are listed
  below:</p>

<ul>
    <li>SMP support has been largely reworked, incorporating code from
      BSD/OS 5.0 (in progress).</li>

    <li>The random(4) device has been rewritten to use the Yarrow
      algorithm.  It harvests entropy from a variety of interrupt
      sources (hardware devices) to provide the entropy required by
      strong cryptography.</li>

    <li>Support for 32-bit Cardbus devices has been added for mobile
      computers (NEWCARD).</li>

    <li>Significant security enhancements have been made throughout the
      system, including a reworked PAM implementation, ACLs, and fewer
      privileged programs in the base system.</li>

    <li>An implementation of scheduler activiations has been added to
      the kernel to more efficiently handle multi-threaded
      programs. (in progress).</li>

    <li>A device filesystem has been added to allow entries in the /dev
      directory to be automatically attached.  Among other benefits,
      devfs provides better support for attaching and detaching
      peripheral devices.</li>

    <li>Support for the sparc64 architecture, including most modern
      workstations and entry level servers from Sun Microsystems (and
      possibly clones from Tatung, and others).</li>

    <li>FFS snapshots and background fsck(8).</li>
</ul>

<h1 class="warning">WARNING</h1>
<hr>

<p>This is a development snapshot, and may include serious software
  bugs.  Do not install this on a machine where important data may be
  put at risk.  In addition, a number of debugging options are turned
  on by default, so the poor performance of this snapshot should not
  set expectations for the final release of 5.0.</p>

<hr>

<p>That said, we have done our best to provide a stable system for
  developers and power-users to help test the new functionality in
  5.0.  For a complete list of new features and known problems, please
  see the <a
  href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.0R/DP1/relnotes.html">release
  notes</a> and <a
  href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.0R/DP1/errata.html"> errata
  list</a>.</p>

<h1>Availability</h1>

<p>5.0-DP1 is available for the i386, alpha, and sparc64 architectures
  and can be installed directly over the net using the boot floppies
  or copied to a local NFS/FTP server.</p>

<p>If you can't afford the CDs, are impatient, or just want to use it
  for evangelism purposes, then by all means download the ISOs,
  otherwise please continue to support the FreeBSD project by
  purchasing media from one of our supporting vendors.  This Developer
  Preview release is available on CD-ROM from the <a
  href="http://www.FreeBSDmall.com">FreeBSD Mall</a>.</p>

<a href="http://www.FreeBSDMall.com/">http://www.FreeBSDMall.com/</a>

<p>FreeBSD is also available via anonymous FTP from mirror sites in
  the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria,
  Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France,
  Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea,
  Lithuania, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania,
  Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Slovak Republic, Slovenia,
  Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, the Ukraine, the United Kingdom,
  and the United States.</p>

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

<tt>ftp://ftp.&lt;yourdomain>.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD</tt>

<p>Any additional mirror sites will be labeled ftp2, ftp3 and so on.</p>


<p>We can't promise that all the mirror sites will carry the larger
  ISO images, but they will at least be available from:</p>

<ul>
  <li><a
  href="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/">ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a
  href="ftp://ftp2.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/">ftp://ftp2.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a
  href="ftp://ftp5.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/">ftp://ftp5.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a
  href="ftp://ftp.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/">ftp://ftp.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a
  href="ftp://ftp.uk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/">ftp://ftp.uk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a
  href="ftp://ftp.dk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/">ftp://ftp.dk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
</ul>

<p>See the <a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook">FreeBSD
  Handbook</a> for additional information about FreeBSD mirror sites.</p>


<h1>Acknowledgments</h1>

<p>Finally, we would like to thank the developers, users, and
companies that continue to make FreeBSD releases possible.</p>

<p>Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to
  finance our ongoing release engineering activities, including <a
  href="http://www.compaq.com">Compaq</a>, <a
  href="http://www.yahoo.com">Yahoo!</a>, and <a
  href="http://www.freebsdmall.com">The FreeBSD Mall</a>.</p>

<p>I couldn't possibly list all of the people that have helped make
5.0 DP1 a reality, but the following people deserve to be singled out.
Will Andrews, Kris Kennaway, Steve Price, and the rest of the Ports
team did an incredible job fixing hundreds of third-party packages.
Robert Watson and Bruce A. Mah did an excellent job writing up the
errata file, helping to decide what changes should be made
specifically for this DP release, and much more.  Jake Burkholder
acted not only as lead developer for the sparc64 port, but also as
package builder and release engineer!  David O'Brien helped integrate
XFree86 4.2 into this snapshot.</p>

<p>Please join me in thanking them for all the hard work that went
  into polishing the FreeBSD -CURRENT development branch over the past
  month.  I would also like to thank the FreeBSD Committers
  (committers@FreeBSD.org), without whom there would be nothing to
  release, and the many thousands of FreeBSD users world-wide who
  contributed bug fixes, features and suggestions.</p>

<p>Above all else, remember that this is a work in progress. Please
help us find bugs now, so that 5.0-RELEASE will be that much better.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

<p>- Murray</p>

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