---
title: "FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE Announcement"
sidenav: download
---

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<p><b>Date:</b> Tue, 28 Oct 2003 23:19:08 -0800<br clear="none" />
  <b>From:</b> "Murray Stokely" &lt;murray@FreeBSD.org&gt;<br clear="none" />
  <b>To:</b> freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org<br clear="none" />
  <b>Subject:</b> FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE is now available</p>

<p>I am happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE, the
  latest release of the FreeBSD -STABLE development branch.  Since
  FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE in April 2003, we have made conservative updates
  to a number of software programs in the base system, dealt with
  known security issues, and merged support for large memory i386
  machines with Page Address Extensions (PAE) from 5.1.</p>

<p>For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see
  the release notes and errata list, available here:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.9R/relnotes.html" shape="rect">http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.9R/relnotes.html</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.9R/errata.html" shape="rect">http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.9R/errata.html</a></p>

<p>This release does not include all of the new technologies that were
  introduced with FreeBSD 5.1 in June.  Most developer resources are
  focused on improving the FreeBSD 5.X branch, and this may very well
  be the last major release of FreeBSD 4.X.  The security officer team
  will continue to actively support the 4.X branch according to the
  normal policy.  Additional 4.9.X releases may be made available when
  necessitated by security vulnerabilities or high-impact
  bugfixes.</p>

<p>We encourage all our users to evaluate FreeBSD 5.1 and the upcoming
5.2.  Because PAE support has only been a feature in 4.X for a few
months, it has not received wide-spread testing, and our most
conservative users may wish to stay with FreeBSD 4.8 until they choose
to migrate to 5.X.</p>

<p>For more information about the distinctions between FreeBSD 4.X and
5.X, or for general information about the FreeBSD release engineering
activities, please see :</p>

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

<h1>Availability</h1>

<p>FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE supports 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>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">
  <tbody>
    <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">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>
  </tbody>
</table>

<p>Each CD or DVD 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, or the DVD distribution.</p>

<p>If you can't afford FreeBSD on media, or just want to use it for
  evangelism purposes, then by all means download the ISO images. 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="ftp://ftp3.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/" shape="rect">ftp://ftp3.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a href="ftp://ftp.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/" shape="rect">ftp://ftp.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a href="ftp://ftp6.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/" shape="rect">ftp://ftp6.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a href="ftp://ftp7.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/" shape="rect">ftp://ftp{2,4,7}.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
  <li><a href="ftp://ftp.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/" shape="rect">ftp://ftp.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/</a></li>
</ul>

<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, Japan, Korea,
  Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania,
  Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Slovak Republic, Slovenia,
  Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, 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>More information about FreeBSD mirror sites can be found at:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html" shape="rect">http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html</a></p>

<p>For instructions on installing FreeBSD, please see Chapter 2 of The
  FreeBSD Handbook. It provides a complete installation walk-through
  for users new to FreeBSD, and can be found online at:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html" shape="rect">http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html</a></p>

<h1>Acknowledgments</h1>

<p>Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to
  finance the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 4.9 including
  The FreeBSD Mall, Compaq, Yahoo!, Sentex Communications, and
  NTT/Verio.</p>

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

<table border="0">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Scott Long &lt;<a href="mailto:scottl@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">scottl@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Release Engineering</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Bruce Mah &lt;<a href="mailto:bmah@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">bmah@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Release Engineering, Documentation</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">Release Engineering, alpha builds</td>
    </tr>

    <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, Security</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"> Mike Silbersack &lt;<a href="mailto:silby@silby.com" shape="rect">silby@silby.com</a>&gt;</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">PAE Testing</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Luoqi Chen &lt;<a href="mailto:luoqi@freebsd.org" shape="rect">luoqi@freebsd.org</a>&gt;</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">PAE Merge</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Joe Marcus Clarke &lt;<a href="mailto:marcus@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">marcus@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Package Building, GNOME</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Kris Kennaway &lt;<a href="mailto:kris@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">kris@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Package Building</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Will Andrews &lt;<a href="mailto:will@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">will@FreeBSD.org</a>&gt;</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Package Building, KDE</td>
    </tr>

  </tbody>
</table>

<p>Please join me in thanking them for all the hard work which went
  into making this release. Many thanks are also due to the FreeBSD
  committers (committers@FreeBSD.org), without whom there would be
  nothing to release, and thousands of FreeBSD users world-wide who
  have contributed bug fixes, features, and suggestions.</p>

<p>Enjoy!</p>

<p>Murray Stokely<br clear="none" />
(For the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team)</p>

<tt>
MD5 (4.9-i386-disc1.iso) = 9195be15a4c8c54a6a6a23272ddacaae<br clear="none" />
MD5 (4.9-i386-disc2.iso) = 51d28c35308cc916b9a9bfcacb3146b8<br clear="none" />
MD5 (4.9-RELEASE-alpha-miniinst.iso) = 51e189a32a5f1bb058adc7627b673ae6<br clear="none" />
MD5 (4.9-RELEASE-alpha-disc2.iso) = ec316dcfb33ca76ba2a240e50d7c9fce<br clear="none" />
</tt>


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