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title: "FreeBSD 4.5 Announcement"
sidenav: download
---

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<p><b>Date:</b> Tuesday, 29 Jan 2002 20:00:00 -0800<br clear="none" />
  <b>From:</b> "Murray Stokely" &lt;murray@FreeBSD.org&gt;<br clear="none" />
  <b>To:</b> announce@FreeBSD.org<br clear="none" />
  <b>Subject:</b> 4.5-RELEASE is now available</p>

<p>I am very pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD
4.5-RELEASE, the very latest release on the FreeBSD -STABLE branch of
development.  Since FreeBSD 4.4 was released in September 2001, we
have made hundreds of fixes, updated many system components, made
several substantial performance improvements, and addressed a wide
variety of security issues.</p>

<p>In particular, there have been significant enhancements in the
  areas of network communications and filesystems.  FreeBSD 4.5
  contains improvements to the TCP stack to provide better throughput.
  In addition, TCP performance is aided by larger default buffer
  sizes.  Finally, FreeBSD 4.5 contains new mechanisms to mitigate the
  effects of TCP Denial of Service attacks.</p>

<p>The FFS filesystem benefits from a new directory layout strategy
  that has demonstrated significantly better performance for
  operations traversing large directory structures.  Various bugs were
  located and fixed in the FFS and NFS code with the help of a
  filesystem exercising program originally developed at Apple
  Computer, Inc.</p>

<p>Those users doing fresh installations of FreeBSD should note some
  changes for newly created filesystems, intended to improve the "out
  of the box" performance of FreeBSD.  In particular, sysinstall(8)
  now enables Soft Updates (a strategy for improving both performance
  and reliability of on-disk data structures) for new filesystems it
  creates and the newfs(8) program will now, by default, create
  filesystems with larger block sizes.</p>

<p>For more information about the most significant changes with this
  release of FreeBSD, please see the release section of our web site:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/" shape="rect">http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/</a></p>

<p>There you will find <a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.5R/notes.html" shape="rect">Release
  Notes</a>,
  <a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.5R/hardware.html" shape="rect">Hardware
  Notes</a>, and a list of
  <a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.5R/errata.html" shape="rect">Errata</a>.</p>

<h1>Availability</h1>

<p>4.5-RELEASE is available for the i386 and alpha architectures and
  can be installed directly over the net using the boot floppies or
  copied to a local NFS/FTP server.</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/" shape="rect">ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://ftp.au.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/" shape="rect">http://ftp.au.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a href="ftp://ftp.dk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/" shape="rect">ftp://ftp.dk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a href="ftp://freebsd.nctu.edu.tw/pub/FreeBSD/" shape="rect">ftp://freebsd.nctu.edu.tw/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
</ul>

<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.  The following
  companies have contributed substantially to the development of
  FreeBSD :</p>

<table border="0">
<tr><td align="left" rowspan="1" colspan="1">FreeBSD Mall, Inc.</td><td align="left" rowspan="1" colspan="1"><a href="http://www.freebsdmall.com" shape="rect">http://www.freebsdmall.com</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left" rowspan="1" colspan="1">FreeBSD Services Ltd.</td><td align="left" rowspan="1" colspan="1"><a href="http://www.freebsd-services.com" shape="rect">http://www.freebsd-services.com</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left" rowspan="1" colspan="1">Daemon News</td><td align="left" rowspan="1" colspan="1"><a href="http://www.bsdmall.com/freebsd1.html" shape="rect">http://www.bsdmall.com/freebsd1.html</a></td></tr>
</table>

<p>Each CD set contains the FreeBSD installation and application
  package bits for the i386 ("PC") architecture.  For a set of
  distfiles used to build ports in the ports collection, please see
  the FreeBSD Toolkit, a 6 CD set containing extra bits which no
  longer fit on the 4 CD set.</p>

<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 and the United Kingdom.</p>

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

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

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

<p>See the <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html" shape="rect">FreeBSD
Handbook</a> for additional information about FreeBSD mirror sites.</p>

<p>The FreeBSD installation instructions have recently been
  significantly enhanced.  Chapter 2 of The FreeBSD Handbook,
  available <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/install.html" shape="rect">online</a>,
  provides a complete installation walk-through for users new to
  FreeBSD.</p>

<h1>Acknowledgments</h1>

<p>Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to
  finance the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 4.5,
  including Compaq, Yahoo!, and The FreeBSD Mall.</p>

<p>In addition to myself, the release engineering team for 4.5-RELEASE
includes:</p>

<table border="0">
<tr><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Robert Watson &lt;<a href="mailto:rwatson@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">rwatson@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Release Engineering</td></tr>
<tr><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">John Baldwin &lt;<a href="mailto:jhb@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">jhb@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Release Engineering</td></tr>
<tr><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Bruce A. Mah &lt;<a href="mailto:bmah@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">bmah@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Release Documentation</td></tr>
<tr><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Steve Price &lt;<a href="mailto:steve@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">steve@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Package Building</td></tr>
<tr><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Wilko Bulte &lt;<a href="mailto:wilko@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">wilko@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Alpha Platform Release Engineering</td></tr>
<tr><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Peter Wemm &lt;<a href="mailto:peter@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">peter@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td><td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Ports
Cluster System Administration</td></tr>
    </table>

<p>Please join me in thanking them for all the hard work which went
  into making this release. 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>Thanks!</p>
<p>- Murray</p>


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