Please test: FreeBSD 13.3-RC1
I just announced the availability of FreeBSD 13.3-RC1. This is the first release candidate of FreeBSD 13.3, and if no further issues are reported will be the only release candidate; I would like to start 13.3-RELEASE builds on Friday, with (allowing time for mirrors to update) the release announcement going out on the following Tuesday (March 5th).This means there's a few days for people to do some last-minute testing and report any problems they find. If you have time to help out with testing, there are two things in particular which I'd like to see get attention:
- Wifi, especially the iwlwifi driver. Bjoern Zeeb merged a significant number of changes to the wifi and linuxkpi (which is used by iwlwifi) code between BETA3 and RC1. While these changes were tested extensively, it's still a big chunk of code — more than I would normally have wanted merged so late, but it fixed serious stability issues with iwlwifi so I thought it was worth including anyway. But I'll feel much better about the release if I know people have been testing this code.
- The installer. Most people who test FreeBSD BETAs do it by upgrading existing systems — fair enough, you test what you have. But this means that the installer doesn't get nearly as much testing as running FreeBSD systems get. So if you have a spare system laying around, please download an installer image and make sure that you can install FreeBSD 13.3-RC1! In particular, keep an eye out for any "missing" hardware or error messages about drivers being unable to reserve resources; we had a late fix to the way that ACPI devices reserve resources.
This is the first FreeBSD release I've managed since assuming the role of FreeBSD Release Engineering Lead, and the first time I've been "flying solo" (I managed FreeBSD 13.2, but Glen was looking over my shoulder for most of the release process); so it's entirely possible that I've gotten something horribly wrong. If you see anything which looks strange, please don't hesitate to get in touch — either directly (cperciva@FreeBSD.org) or by emailing the release engineering team (re@FreeBSD.org).
It's a privilege to manage the FreeBSD release process, but it also takes a significant amount of time. If you'd like to help me find time to work on FreeBSD, please consider contributing to my Patreon.