From a mail to the FreeBSD announce mailing list (not in archive yet
)
Code:
Hello Everyone,
On June 30th, FreeBSD 7.2 will reach its End of Life and will no longer be
supported by the FreeBSD Security Team. Users of this release are strongly
encouraged to upgrade to FreeBSD 7.3 before that date; FreeBSD 7.3 will be
supported until the end of March 2012. Please note that since FreeBSD 7.1
has been designated for 'Extended' support, it will continue to be supported
until the end of January 2011, i.e., FreeBSD 7.1 will be supported longer
than FreeBSD 7.2.
The End of Life date for FreeBSD 7.2 was originally announced as May 31, but
was delayed by one month in accordance with Security Team policy in order to
allow a 3 month window between the release of FreeBSD 7.3 and the End of Life
of FreeBSD 7.2 to allow time for systems to be upgraded.
The freebsd-update(8) utility can be used to upgrade i386 and amd64 systems
from 7.2-RELEASE (or 7.2-RELEASE-pX for some X) to 7.3-RELEASE using binary
updates (i.e., without compiling from source) as described in the 7.3-RELEASE
announcement; given an adequate internet connection, this process usually takes
15 minutes or less.
The current supported branches and expected EoL dates are:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Branch | Release | Type | Release date | Estimated EoL |
|-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------|
|RELENG_6 |n/a |n/a |n/a |November 30, 2010|
|---------------------------------------------------------------------|
|RELENG_6_4 |6.4-RELEASE |Extended|November 18, 2008|November 30, 2010|
|---------------------------------------------------------------------|
|RELENG_7 |n/a |n/a |n/a |last release + 2y|
|-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------|
|RELENG_7_1 |7.1-RELEASE |Extended|January 4, 2009 |January 31, 2011 |
|-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------|
|RELENG_7_2 |7.2-RELEASE |Normal |May 4, 2009 |June 30, 2010 |
|-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------|
|RELENG_7_3 |7.3-RELEASE |Extended|March 23, 2010 |March 31, 2012 |
|-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------|
|RELENG_8 |n/a |n/a |n/a |last release + 2y|
|-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------|
|RELENG_8_0 |8.0-RELEASE |Normal |November 25, 2009|November 30, 2010|
|-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------|
|RELENG_8_1 |8.1-RELEASE |Extended|not yet |release + 2 years|
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
For clarity, this is NOT an April Fool's joke.
- --
Colin Percival
Security Officer, FreeBSD | freebsd.org | The power to serve