64 bit FreeBSD 7 - Stable enough?

pkhunter

pkhunter

I am thinking of moving my Internet server from CentOS 5 (64 bit) to a FreeBSD 64 bit install.

Postgresql is our main database, not MySQL. So far CentOS 5 x64 has been stable enough, but we do have performance issues that everyone talks about and I have been told on the Postgresql (PG) mailing list that I should try FreeBSD.

My question:

(1) Should I be brave and go with version 7, or should I stick with the tried and tested version 6 which the net knows to be stable?

(2) If I go conservatively with 6, how easy would it be to upgrade to 7 in the future. Will it require an "OS reload", which means all my settings including home directories on Cpanel, crontabs, and other such settings will have to be re-done?

(3) For people who have experience, should I work with Plesk or Cpanel? I know code puritans prefer Plesk, but I don't mind Cpanel thus far and my comfort is with it. I just keep it to the stable version, not current or bleeding edge. My question is more for stability and performance on FreeBSD. No major difference?

(4) I have majorly customized crontabs etc. Is the structure of website directories basically the same on FreeBSD as well? I also use heavily customized admin script stuff with Perl and PHP scripts--these will remain the same on FreeBSD as well?

Thanks for any thoughts or experiences. Apologies if this is a "newbie" post.
 
pkhunter said:
(1) Should I be brave and go with version 7, or should I stick with the tried and tested version 6 which the net knows to be stable?
Click to expand...

I would go with 7, I've used 7/amd64 combo since it came out with very little issues.

(2) If I go conservatively with 6, how easy would it be to upgrade to 7 in the future. Will it require an "OS reload", which means all my settings including home directories on Cpanel, crontabs, and other such settings will have to be re-done?
Click to expand...

Oh cPanel, gotta love it! </sarcasm> I have had great experience with cPanel on FreeBSD. By all means, it requires work, nothing like using it on CentOS. Once all the little intricacies are taken care of, it works great though. If you went with 6 and wanted to move to 7, I'm going to say that it is possibly, but cPanel is most likely going to tell you to reload. As far as redoing everything, you can export your accounts with # /scripts/pkgacct and restore them on the new server easily.

It isn't the easiest my any means in the beginning, but I find the stability of FreeBSD is more than worth the slight initial headache.

(3) For people who have experience, should I work with Plesk or Cpanel? I know code puritans prefer Plesk, but I don't mind Cpanel thus far and my comfort is with it. I just keep it to the stable version, not current or bleeding edge. My question is more for stability and performance on FreeBSD. No major difference?
Click to expand...

Never been a Plesk fan, last time I tried it, it was atrocious. That was about 2 years ago though.

Edit: I run both Current and Edge on both CentOS and FreeBSD servers, the only time you need to watch out is when a new major version comes out, 11.23 > 11.24 upgrade didn't honor the "don't use packages" setting for me, so it required a bit of cleanup in ports.

(4) I have majorly customized crontabs etc. Is the structure of website directories basically the same on FreeBSD as well? I also use heavily customized admin script stuff with Perl and PHP scripts--these will remain the same on FreeBSD as well?
Click to expand...

Mostly the same, just make sure if you're using cPanel that you have /home symlink'd to /usr/home.


Thanks for any thoughts or experiences. Apologies if this is a "newbie" post.
Click to expand...

np, hope I helped.
 
Great, thanks a bunch Voltar. Yes you answered all my questions.

One last one: do you notice any real and tellable difference between the performance of a CentOS and a FreeBSD machine?
 
pkhunter said:
One last one: do you notice any real and tellable difference between the performance of a CentOS and a FreeBSD machine?
Click to expand...

Short answer: On the same hardware I feel FreeBSD performs better than CentOS, based on a default/minimal/base installation, not to mention uses less resources.
 
i am very new at this forum. we are looking much performance on proxy server. many peoples are given suggestion move to freebsd. we also required Tproxy feature so any tell me the current version 7.2 meets my requirements. keep in mind we almost serve 80 MB on currrent Centos x64 5.2 with lots of sysctl tunning options. i never seen yet performance tuning guide for 7.2
 
I use 7.1-release on amd64 and happy ;)
About stability - didnt see any `-RELEASE` branch that is not stabile =) Like we say in Russia "Works like a clock" =)

Also, before i tried to upgrade from 6.2 to 7.0 - it was soft upgrade, except xorg (moved directory). Seems to all services saved without troubles.

So, i dont have any disadvantages to move to 7.x-release and recommend, especially on SMP system - this is great OS ;)
 
Forget about Linux and 'supported versions' if you want to run transparent proxies on FreeBSD. It's a very different world. Note that Squid (mostly used for this type of setup) is developed on FreeBSD and needs no ugly hacks to work there.
 
i also run several 64 bit FreeBSD servers on 7.2 and have had zero stability issues. in fact it screams. once you get comfortable working with FreeBSD you'll likely never go back to Linux. that's the change i made back in 2001 with the 4.x branch. though i must say, for all my routing i'm using vyatta. my only gripe about vyatta is that it doesn't use FreeBSD for the OS.

Companies like Juniper, nCircle, Nokia, Apple, and Citrix (netscaler) have all realized the benefits and the strength of using the FreeBSD operating system. so, what i am saying is, go for it!
 
"The word tproxy isn't even used in the BSD world. It's called 'transparent proxy'" ...
No, that's incorrect.
If you are speaking of interception caching, pf is your friend.
If you're looking at bridging, freebsd has native support.
TPROXY, in this scenario does some extra stuff:
1) Tracks client ip when cache interception is activated
2) Spoofs that client address when a cache non-hit occurs and the bridge need to forward the request.

This is more than vanilla pf, or kernel can do.
Squid 3.0 - 3.x is natively capable (that I know of), I think there are some 2.7 patches.
lusca has native support.
There are some kernel patches required:
http://code.google.com/p/script-bsd/downloads/detail?name=freebsd-tproxy-sys.patch&can=2&q=

Happy googling.

The Sproggg
 
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