PC-BSD 9.0-RC3 Now Available
The third (and hopefully last) release candidate for the upcoming PC-BSD 9.0 is now available! This release includes the latest FreeBSD 9.0-RC3 base, along with numerous bug fixes and enhancements.
This is the first release available as both pre-built VirtualBox and VMware images. Each image includes the various guest tools pre-installed, ready for booting in the virtual environment of your choice.
This release also includes a new graphical boot-loader for fresh installations. Users performing an upgrade from RC2 -> RC3 can enable the new bootloader by placing the following lines in /boot/loader.conf:
# Enable the graphical boot-loader
autoboot_delay=”12″
graphics_enable=”YES”
beastie_theme=”/boot/themes/default/theme.conf”
Changelog
Notable changes in this release (in no particular order):
- Fixed the default KDE wallpaper / desktop theme
- Add option to skip performing system upgrades at bootup, in case the user doesn’t have the time to wait.
- Fix bug starting the port jail from rc.d
- Make sure we clear any KDE cache during upgrade
- Fixed bugs installing some PBIs from AppCafe causing seg faults
- Load ext2fs automatically
- Default LXDE clock to AM/PM time
- Add default openbox wallpaper / menus
- Load the “iir” raid driver on install media
- Add extra meta-pkg for VMware guest support
- Reduce CPU usage while checking for system updates on the tray
- Add new graphical boot loader enabled by default
- Updated the handbook for 9.0
- Speed up the download process of system upgrades
- Add patch for GDM which corrects issues with auto-login
- Created new VirtualBox / VMware images for download
Known Issues
The system sources / ports tree don’t show up during the component selection, will be fixed for the final.
The firewall manager incorrectly reads the /etc/pf.conf file, will be fixed in the final.
The default QT theme doesn’t always match the rest of the desktops, will be fixed in the final.
Reporting Bugs
Since this is a pre-release, please feel assist us by reporting and fixing bugs. Users are encouraged to discuss their findings on the testers mailing list, or via the PC-BSD Forums.
There are a greater variety of ways to install PC-BSD in the 9.x series. When providing feedback please indicate which install media you are using and in which window manager the error occurs.
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Comments (64)
Waiting for the final release to test it!
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What are the login details for the VirtualBox VMs?
Thanks
Guy
The password for both the user account and root is guest. This info will be added to the documentation soon.
Sorry, but “guest” is not correct. I downloaded the 64-Bit version and I cannot login.
Sorry, major typo there. Meant to say the password for both is “pcbsd”.
Yep, works. Keep up the good work.
Thanks. Great Job!.
I am waiting the final release to install in my desktop and i’ll put a banner about pc-bsd in my website
Thanks!
WTF is this in the bootloader page? I don’t want fucking GNOME on my PC-BSD. Take that faggot shit off, I want KDE back.
GNOME is just one possibility of 12 in 9.0 and KDE is still the default unless you select to install another desktop. If you are using one of the lighter media (i.e. not the full USB or DVD), you are probably seeing LXDE as KDE won’t fit on that media.
Can you just delete classless comments like that?
Pretty Please?
I could, but I don’t like to play comment police (unless its, say, porn spam).
A post such as this “john” person made, insults overall this great blog that you take lots of your own time to maintain, thereby insulting you Dru directly, not to mention everyone else who has worked on PC-BSD in the past, present and future.
He is also insulting all the people who volunteer to maintain and improve Gnome.
“john” also insults gay people around the world, as this blog is of course viewable around the world. Who will he insult next?
Anyway, my main reason for making this first post here is to Thank Everyone including you Dru, who work so hard on providing this great free PC friendly OS. I always make it a point to Thank people who do awesome things for me, especially if it is totally Free.
Thanks Dru for keeping us informed via this blog and I hope everyone (except “john” of course) has a Happy New Year.
You’re welcome and happy new years to you as well.
9.0 rc3 64 bits does not boot
/compat/linux/proc : file system not found
We’ll need more info about your setup: amount of RAM and disk (in partition or VM).
I did the installation again. There were errors:
cddone: got error 0×5 back
…..
SCSI sense: MEDIUM ERROR
…
Trying to mount root from usf:/dev/usf/ROOTFS
Then the graphical installer pop up normally and the installation ends successfully. But could not boot because of the error I reported earlier.
I burned another DVD and problem was fix. (Easy break, easy fix)
The question is why everything looks like the sky was blue when there were ERRORS.
I know I could have seen those errors at first but I did not.
Have good vacations !!
Thanks for the update!
you simply edit (used ee) the fstab & take out the last line referring to the linux procfs, it then boots.
BUT after install following probs are:
it then boots to a login prompt (not a graphical shell) and i do have access to all the terms F1-F8 (terms tty0-tty7), however NO graphical shell, i am using the 64bit version, a i5 core laptop with intel integrated graphics..?? pehaps that’s the problem?
AND ALSO, NO user accounts created during the install script wee retained, /home is empty
for the graphical shell problem, should i run any diag utilities to determine if Xorg supports this chipset? if so, what is the diag utility called ?
thx..
That was one weird install
Did you change any options during the installation? Which file did you download?
AR9285 WiFi didn’t work on my eee (1005HA) in RC2 and still doesn’t work in RC3. I have commented on this situation in the PC-BSD Forums.
thanks very much, I’m sure there is a lot of hard work behind it. pcBSD8.2 has been my main desktop distro this last year and I’m just waiting to see whats inside this release number 9. Im going to test first a virtual machine. If I install this RC 3 in a box (not a VM) will I be able to update to version 9 without any problems?…I’m thinking about installing pcBSD 9 in a primary partition in a hard disk where I allready have installed Centos 6 and Mandriva 2011, is there any guide that I could follow to make a proper configuration of the bootloader for these 3 OS?…Greetings from Euskal Herria (Basque Country)!
Yes, you will be able to easily update to RELEASE using Update Manager. It will automatically notify you when the RELEASE upgrade becomes available.
Thank you Mariano for the question and Dru for the answer … I am new to BSD and have a same question… will install it on my laptop!
I just installed and am playing around with RC2 … installed it just before RC3 release. Compared to PC-BSD 8, there’s a wonderful improvement. I’ve used other distros and was going to install FreeBSD 8 and use ports to install everything but this is just a faster way with almost all the same benefits
. My 4850 Radeon card is also working wonderfully with the Radeon 3d driver. Gonna keep playing around with this as my regular desktop. If I like enough … no more Windows. And I’ll look into helping the community too! 
Thanks for the comment!
Hi,
kaffeine installed via AppCafe failed to start (fresh install RC3).
VNC installed via pkg_add is not visible in Application starter. Also “search” option didn’t find it.
‘VLC’ ist ok now. Downloading kaffeine PBI again for a another try.
‘VLC’ ist ok now. Downloading kaffeine PBI again for next try.
Kaffeine PBI still doesn’ start. Building from ports ok.
LibreOffice (PBI) fails to start after a fresh installation of 9.0-RC3 (64-Bit).
Thank you for testing these. We’ll take a look to see what the issue is with these PBIs.
It’s not possible to put weather plasmoid onto the desktop. KWin crashes, black screen, then normal desktop but no weather plasmoid.
Sometimes mouse pointer freezes. Only Ctrl + Alt + F2 to get console helps and then reboot.
I have just downloaded the VirtualBox 64 bit version and the size and MD5 do not match the info given on the dowload page (size 3.1GB). The size appears to be the same from all mirrors (2.4GB), so I guess is likely accurate. The download page gives size and MD5 as the same for 32 bit and 64 bit, so maybe the 64 bit info has been published incorrectly? Please check and update.
Thanks
Thanks for letting us know! This is now fixed on the downloads page.
- Asus Xonar PCI-E D2X is STILL NOT recognized. Afaik there is support for this card in OSS 4.2, probably it was already there in 4.1 or earlier. But still I get the same kind of “report this soundcard Message” that I already had when I tested 8.2 beta/rc last year. I’m sure I reported this soundcard at least twice. And already at the time of 8.2 support for this soundcard via oss was possible. So what’s wrong?
- Kwriter crashes on launch, always, Krita seems to have messed up graphics in the layer dock. Koffice seems to be not ready atm
- periodically crashes of knotify, sometimes accompanied by crashes of other gizmos in the notifications and jobs tray area. Dolphin also likes to crash, but only like every 3rd or 4th time when the other stuff crashes.
- overall stability is horrible on my machine, certainly not what you expect from a rc software, more like pre or early alpha. Maybee my particular set of hardware, although Windows and Linux run stable on it for months without issues.
- can’t we have the orignal KDE icons as an option? Honestly I don’t like the PCBSD branding of KDE
- uninstalling preinstalled apps is cumbersome. Do we really need okkular and another
pdf viewer? Gwenview, Digikam AND Kphotoalbum? And there are certainly more examples of
what appears to me as an overkill in choice …
- otherwise nice improvements over the last version (8.2) I tested. An very positive surprise were up to date Version of Blender and and almost up to date version of Virtualbox.
OSS is not installed by default. Does adding it with pkg_add -r oss fix the problem? If not, also try disabling the onboard sound in the BIOS.
The bugs are still being worked out in KDE 4.7.3. Fortunately, PC-BSD is no longer tied into KDE and other window managers are available.
Also, don’t forget that you can deselect subcomponents during the installation of KDE which will reduce the number of apps significantly.
Thanks for your feedback!
Installing OSS with pkg add works fine, no errors are displayed. Added the line for OSS according to the Output of the pkg add command.
Unfortunatly, PCBSD does crash during boot now, reproducible, even in safe mode. It crashes rather late in the text part during boot, before it reaches the login line after which X is started.
Up to now, I tried 2 times to install oss. During the first attempt I simply added the line to rc.conf as the installer told. On my second attempt I added the line ro rc.conf and commented out the two existing lines that dealed with sound configuration (mixer and sounddetect).
But the outcome was always the same, the system crashes late during boot up as described above.
Btw, there is no onboard sound on my board, an Asus Z7S WS. But with the board comes a Realtek Chip on a smallish pci-e 1x Card with a pompous name like bernstein audio card. It worked fine (that is for what you could expect from a realtek audio chip) with PCBSD 8.2, but of course I would prefer to use a real soundcard indefinitly.
That sounds like a video problem. What is the video card and which driver did you select during the Display setup?
Looking at this blog entry (http://traebarlow.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/pcbsd-8-1-oss4/) I am under the assumption that it is necessary to edit WAY MORE config files then the single entry in rc.conf at which the oss setup hints. I will try the directions from the link above and report back if they will not help.
Concerning Video everything was fine up to the point where I edited rc.conf according to the note displayed by the oss4 installer. Graphics Adapter is a NV 8800 Ultra, i think the driver was nvidia blob, the setup seems to use that one automatically. Having said that, I dont believe there is a problem beside the oss configuration. If the howto in the above mentioned blog is right, I simply did not all necessary steps to configure oss, as the message of oss setup gave the impression that adding that certain line to rc.conf is the only thing necessary.
Yup, soundon is the culprit and it freezes the system cold. I’ll send an email to the port maintainer with you cc’d.
Greetings from East Africa via Canada & Barbados!
A LOT of people on this side of the planet cruise the Net on their cellies when they’re not near a desktop or lappie. 
Just one teeny, weenie problem…
I CAN’T view the pcbsd.org website on my Nokia celly with Opera Mini. Is it possible to create a ‘mobile view’ for mobile surfers?
Great site & blog!!
Thanks for the suggestion. Upgrades are planned for both the blog and the website in late January, and supporting mobile is one of the goals.
If I install 9.0-RC3 and keep it updated will it become the “GA” 9.0 release eventually?
Yes
So i tested again to install oss4 according to the directions in the above mentioned link, but once again my machine became unbootable, not even in save mode.
Prior to my attempts to install oss4, i also noticed problems with ntfs partitions. They show up twice in Dolphin, with the same uid or disklabel. In the case of uid, one of the entries has -1 postfixed. Also, all the $something systemfiles from ntfs show up as normal files and are not hidden, INCLUDING the Masterfiletable! What is hidden is new files, they are complettly invisible except to the app that created or downloaded them. Even if you log out as a user and log in as root, the files stay invisible. Only after a reboot they become visible for all users and applications.
I’m not seeing that behavior in dolphin on a fresh 64-bit install. Did you install or upgrade? Are you a 32-bit or 64-bit install?
I did clean installs from the 64bit DVD. Sometimes as the only OS on the machine, sometimes dualbooting with Windows XP 64bit Edition. Can’t remember if it makes a difference because I was focused on the oss4 stuff.
Maybee the dual entries are not there right after login but kick in after dolphin has crashed. Remember, I wrote that the gizmos in the job and notification crash every few minutes on my machine, and dolphin crashes like 2 to 3 times in a hour. What I can say with certainty is that I saw the dual entries on several of the installations i did during the last days.
The one ntfs partition that is always there (because it holds all my data) is a raid on a LSI/3Ware 9550SXU-4LP. Firmware of the adapter was updated by the end of november, so it is probably the latest or near latest. That is the one I am absolutly sure that i saw with double entries in Dolphin and where I could see all the $whatever internal Microsoft ntfs filesystem systemfiles. But I think I also saw my XP system partitions with double entries when I tested a dualboot scenario, but I am not as certain with these as with my data partition on the 3ware controller.
Is there a bugtracker to follow the oss4 problem?
freebsd.orgAaah, and here is the problem: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=160964&cat=misc. We will have to look at the best way to make it easy for users to install an oss PBI seeing that the default kernel conflicts with it….
Regarding the RAID, I wonder if dolphin is intelligent enough to understand the array? There is some RAID related stuff at https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=dolphin. Would be worthwhile to either add a comment to an existing similar thread or to start a new one if a similar one does not exist.
All I can say that it worked without problems for 8 Months with linux, but then the array was formated as ext4, now it is ntfs which of course might be huge difference.
Also there were no double entries for ntfs partitions in dolphin during the time i used linux if i remember correctly.
So far I notice no problems with the ntfs array in Windows XP 64bit, running checkdisk to be sure but that will take like forever for 2,7TB.
Thanks for the links. I might install RC3 for one last time and take a look at dolphin. As i said i did not bother to much since my main concern was oss.
Let us know if you recompile the kernel without sound and that fixes the oss freeze issue.
I read through chapter 9 of the Freebsd handbook and I don’t think that I am ready to compile a kernel on my own with the little knowledge I have of FreeBSD.
Looking forward to the final release of version 9.0.
Downloaded and installed RC 3 today. Two issues so far –
1) LibreOffice fails to launch after install. Appears like it will launch but nothing happens.
2) Sound from 3 of 5 speakers (not back speakers). Could be I have not found the option or file to tweak yet.
Thanks.
The LibreOffice PBI has since been fixed so should work now.
Regarding the speakers, I suspect it is a sysctl setting, perhaps one of the ones in man pcm. If you find it, please post the setting for other users.
Expected to fix sound with the advice shared in:
http://forums.pcbsd.org/archive/index.php/t-13634.html
“Now just add this to 7.1 output multichannel audio:
dev.pcm.0.play.vchanformat=s16le:7.1
or
sysctl dev.pcm.0.play.vchanformat=s16le:7.1
to alter dynamically and see the results
if you need 5.1 you need to change 7.1 to 5.1 or take a sight to the link fore more information.”
but I get the message:
sysctl: dev.pcm.0.play.vchanformat: Invalid argument
Not sure if this is to be expected in version 9 or a bug.
Thanks again.
freebsd.orgWe’re not sure why that is happening and Google is not reporting anything useful so it may be a new bug introduced in 9.0. Can you please submit a bug report: http://www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html
The download links for the 32bit VMWare and VirtualBox images are broken. They have x32 in the URL, but it should be x86.
Example:
ftp://mirrors.isc.org/pub/pcbsd/9.0-RC3/i386/PCBSD9.0-RC3-x32-VBOX.vdi.bz2
–>
ftp://mirrors.isc.org/pub/pcbsd/9.0-RC3/i386/PCBSD9.0-RC3-x86-VBOX.vdi.bz2
Thanks for the heads up! These are now fixed.
Hi,
KMix doesn’t work to get my microphone (wired) running. So I can’t do VOIP.
KMix for mp3 works.
where is final pcbsd 9?it is too late dude!thanks for working very hard.
We’re waiting for FreeBSD 9.0 to be released, which should happen in the next day or so.
Awesome, Thanks a lot for the update!