DragonFly BSD

release54

DragonFly BSD 5.4

DragonFly version 5.4 brings a new system compiler in GCC 8, improved NUMA support, a large number of network and virtual machine driver updates, and updates to video support. This release is 64-bit only, as with previous releases.

DragonFly version 5.4.1 has significant HAMMER2 improvements (meta-consistency protection for snapshots and crashes, better on-media topology), better WLAN interface handling, and improved WLAN connection with dhcpcd(8).

DragonFly 5.4.2 has a fix for a rare potential HAMMER2 corruption problem. Other minor 5.4.2 changes are marked in the full notes below.

DragonFly 5.4.3 has a fix for an Intel hardware floating-point bug.

The details of all commits between the 5.2 and 5.4 branches are available in the associated commit messages for 5.4.0rc, 5.4.0, 5.4.1, 5.4.2 and 5.4.3.

Big-ticket items

GCC 8

HAMMER2

Details

Checksums

MD5 (dfly-x86_64-5.4.3_REL.img) = 8ba26d359444aa785ed01fc0d08cc281
MD5 (dfly-x86_64-5.4.3_REL.iso) = 3e5e5416aee739091e87c6805e50f821
MD5 (dfly-x86_64-5.4.3_REL.img.bz2) = 4303314a0cbcaec7f82e5bd0ad635122
MD5 (dfly-x86_64-5.4.3_REL.iso.bz2) = b78d943e916eeed735771476e4aad18f

Upgrading

If you have an existing 5.2.x or 5.4.x system and are running a generic kernel, the normal upgrade process, described below, will work.

Change your local /usr/src to 5.4:

cd /usr/src
git fetch origin
git branch DragonFly_RELEASE_5_4 origin/DragonFly_RELEASE_5_4
git checkout DragonFly_RELEASE_5_4
git pull

And then rebuild: (in /usr/src)

make buildworld
make buildkernel
make installkernel
make installworld
make upgrade

(reboot your system)

make initrd 

make initrd is optional for systems with unencrypted disks, and has been possible for several releases; it's mentioned here for completeness. Look at the initrd(7) man page for details on what it does.

Don't forget to upgrade your existing packages. 5.4 packages have already been built and are immediately available.

pkg update
pkg upgrade

All changes since DragonFly 5.2

Security Issues

Kernel

Filesystems

Networking

Driver updates

Userland

Boot

Various tools have been upgraded in the base system:

Compiler status

Package updates

HAMMER2 changes in 5.4.1

HAMMER2 changes in 5.4.2

A HAMMER2 corruption issue has been found: it can ONLY occur during heavy write activity during a bulkfree operation, typically when heavy manipulation of directory entries or inodes occurs. This problem is fixed in 5.4.2.

HAMMER2 now has immediate (async) flush follow-through when the operating system requests it, with write-clustering support at the device level if enabled. This, plus other changes have improved concurrent filesystem ops and I/O and sequential filesystem write I/O.