Well, my FreeSBIE experiment was a qualified success. At first, I thought it was another heartbreak. I booted off the CD on two different machines, and in both cases, the X server came up just fine, but the mouse was frozen. So it was good to see the older, ATI All-in-Wonder card come up just fine, but it was still unfortunate that I couldn't get the mouse to work.
So I tried a few other things. I left the machine switched in while it booted, but that didn't seem to help. But then I accidently moved the mouse while the X server was starting up, and, voila, I had a working mouse! Even switching out and back didn't break it. And it even worked on the older machine too - whoopee!
So it looks like if I have the mouse send a message at some point during the boot phase, the FreeBSD mouse drivers recognize it just fine. I might play with it some more to see exactly what's up, and then I might retry the latest FreeBSD full CD-ROM and see what happens. Or maybe just try the installation option on the FreeSBIE one.
FreeSBIE - Free System Burned In Economy
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Friday, December 10, 2004
FreeSBIE
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but here's a distro for FreeBSD that you just burn on a CD, boot from it, and then just run it without installing it. I've downloaded the latest version (1.1, based on FreeBSD 5.3), and I'm going to try it on my problem system to see if it works any better.
FreeSBIE - Free System Burned In Economy
FreeSBIE - Free System Burned In Economy
Speaking of Xandros
Here's a very complete review of the latest Xandros version:
Review: Xandros Desktop OS 3 Deluxe Edition
Review: Xandros Desktop OS 3 Deluxe Edition
FreeBSD Follies
Sorry things have been so quiet here on my FreeBSD blog. To be
honest, the reason is that I've sort of drifted away from FreeBSD a
little. My server is still running FreeBSD, but I ran into several
annoying problems when trying to installed the latest version on one
of my older machines and decided to try a Linux flavor instead.
The story is that I have an older machine (an 850mhz overclocked
Pentium) that I bought a real cheap big hard drive for, intending to
use it as a backup server for the other machines I have here in the
house. I was able to pick up a 120gb hard drive for a mere US$49
after rebates - hard to argue with that price! So I figured I would
install a Bacula server, and use it to back up all the other
machines. This machine does have an old 14gb tape drive on it too,
but for price, I could probably just by another hard drive!
So off I went, intending to install the latest FreeBSD, and maybe even
play with X11 (either Gnome or KDE) while I was at it. The video card
is an ATI All-in-wonder card, which, while old, should still be
supported by all flavors of X. It does have a funky UDMA 66 controller
(not even UDMA 100), which Windows has a problem with, but I was
hoping for the best with my new hard drive.
Unfortunately, after spending a few hours one evening, I just couldn't
get FreeBSD 5.3 to work correctly. It may have been bad timing, but
the version I was trying to install seemed to be halfway between
XFree86 and the X.org X server. Most of the docs, as well as nearly
all the hints I found on the web, talked about XFree86 and running a
bunch of utilities that just weren't there. And it didn't work "out
of the box", which is strange because all the flavors of Linux I've
tried on this hardware did. Half the time the X server hung, while
the other half the time it worked in a 640x480 mode or something. It
was very frustrating, as I couldn't find any docs on how to config the
thing, so I was tweaking files without even knowing if they were the
right files!
Even when I could get the X server running in some minimal fashion, I
kept running into that long time FreeBSD bugaboo, which is that the
FreeBSD mouse drivers and KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse) switches don't
get along at all. I use a fairly popular Belkin 4 system switch to
good effect, and no Windows or Linux I've ever run has given me a
problem. But I remember running into the "wonky mouse" problem when
installing my server, which I just ignore because it doesn't use X.
And I see that some things never change, as it was still there, and
people were still complaining about it on the mailing list, and the
developers were still saying it is a problem with all the KVM
switches, not their software. A very frustrating attitude!
And, like I said, no Linux or Windows installation has ever had a
problem. Basically, when you swap out of and the back to the machine,
the driver loses contact with the mouse and the cursor starts flying
all over the place. I think one explanation I read was that the
driver was trying to be smart and it turns out it is probably being
too smart.
But without some kind of hacks (like replugging in the mouse or using
a second mouse), FreeBSD with X is well nigh usesless to me. So I
gave up, and put the whole backup server project on hold.
Then I came across a fairly new Linux distro called
mentioned in an OSNews.com
review. Now, I'm a sucker for new OS distributions. Don't ask me why,
I just love burning a new CD and seeing what they look like. So I've
tried a few different Linux distros, and I use
so I'm reasonably familiar with using them. There are lots of basic
similiarities between FreeBSD and Linux, although many of the admin
features are quite different.
So in a Linux distro, I'm really looking for ease of use, especially
when it comes to setting it up and administering the system. Doing
things like turning on and off servers, keeping it up to date, etc,
need to be real easy, as I don't have the time to delve into it like I
do with FreeBSD. And let me tell you, Xandros has this in
spades!
I guess the 2.x Open Circulation version is the first version
from Xandros that could be downloaded for free. It doesn't provide
all the functionality of even the Standard Edition (US$50), but
is still pretty solid (I don't really need faster than 4x burning
speed). You can see the
title="Xandros comparison matrix">comparison matrix here (they
just came out with version 3). The Xandros distro got some real high
marks from various reviewers, including the not always reliable Jerry
Pournelle in his
title="Chaos Manor Xandros review">Chaos Manor (registration
required) DDJ article, so I decided to give it a whirl.
Like Pournelle mentions in his column, everything just worked out of
the box. KDE installed and worked, Samba installed and worked, the
mouse isn't wonky and all is good. I can see the other machines (both
Windows and my server running Samba) from this machine and
vice-versa. It looks nice and was real easy to update and install new
software. It took a little digging to figure out how to point the
"Xandros Networks" program (its updater and package manager) to
non-official sites, but once I did, I was able to grab Bacula and get
it running, albeit with a little pain, as I had to figure out the
dependencies myself. Ahh, for the ports functionality, sigh...
But I was very happy how well it worked out of the box and how little
work I had to do to get it running. Probably the easiest installation
of an OS I've had in ages, and that includes all flavors of
Windows. So I think I'm going to stick with Xandros for this machine
anyway. I will probably use this blog to log my work on it as well as
my FreeBSD machine.
honest, the reason is that I've sort of drifted away from FreeBSD a
little. My server is still running FreeBSD, but I ran into several
annoying problems when trying to installed the latest version on one
of my older machines and decided to try a Linux flavor instead.
The story is that I have an older machine (an 850mhz overclocked
Pentium) that I bought a real cheap big hard drive for, intending to
use it as a backup server for the other machines I have here in the
house. I was able to pick up a 120gb hard drive for a mere US$49
after rebates - hard to argue with that price! So I figured I would
install a Bacula server, and use it to back up all the other
machines. This machine does have an old 14gb tape drive on it too,
but for price, I could probably just by another hard drive!
So off I went, intending to install the latest FreeBSD, and maybe even
play with X11 (either Gnome or KDE) while I was at it. The video card
is an ATI All-in-wonder card, which, while old, should still be
supported by all flavors of X. It does have a funky UDMA 66 controller
(not even UDMA 100), which Windows has a problem with, but I was
hoping for the best with my new hard drive.
Unfortunately, after spending a few hours one evening, I just couldn't
get FreeBSD 5.3 to work correctly. It may have been bad timing, but
the version I was trying to install seemed to be halfway between
XFree86 and the X.org X server. Most of the docs, as well as nearly
all the hints I found on the web, talked about XFree86 and running a
bunch of utilities that just weren't there. And it didn't work "out
of the box", which is strange because all the flavors of Linux I've
tried on this hardware did. Half the time the X server hung, while
the other half the time it worked in a 640x480 mode or something. It
was very frustrating, as I couldn't find any docs on how to config the
thing, so I was tweaking files without even knowing if they were the
right files!
Even when I could get the X server running in some minimal fashion, I
kept running into that long time FreeBSD bugaboo, which is that the
FreeBSD mouse drivers and KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse) switches don't
get along at all. I use a fairly popular Belkin 4 system switch to
good effect, and no Windows or Linux I've ever run has given me a
problem. But I remember running into the "wonky mouse" problem when
installing my server, which I just ignore because it doesn't use X.
And I see that some things never change, as it was still there, and
people were still complaining about it on the mailing list, and the
developers were still saying it is a problem with all the KVM
switches, not their software. A very frustrating attitude!
And, like I said, no Linux or Windows installation has ever had a
problem. Basically, when you swap out of and the back to the machine,
the driver loses contact with the mouse and the cursor starts flying
all over the place. I think one explanation I read was that the
driver was trying to be smart and it turns out it is probably being
too smart.
But without some kind of hacks (like replugging in the mouse or using
a second mouse), FreeBSD with X is well nigh usesless to me. So I
gave up, and put the whole backup server project on hold.
Then I came across a fairly new Linux distro called
mentioned in an OSNews.com
review. Now, I'm a sucker for new OS distributions. Don't ask me why,
I just love burning a new CD and seeing what they look like. So I've
tried a few different Linux distros, and I use
so I'm reasonably familiar with using them. There are lots of basic
similiarities between FreeBSD and Linux, although many of the admin
features are quite different.
So in a Linux distro, I'm really looking for ease of use, especially
when it comes to setting it up and administering the system. Doing
things like turning on and off servers, keeping it up to date, etc,
need to be real easy, as I don't have the time to delve into it like I
do with FreeBSD. And let me tell you, Xandros has this in
spades!
I guess the 2.x Open Circulation version is the first version
from Xandros that could be downloaded for free. It doesn't provide
all the functionality of even the Standard Edition (US$50), but
is still pretty solid (I don't really need faster than 4x burning
speed). You can see the
title="Xandros comparison matrix">comparison matrix here (they
just came out with version 3). The Xandros distro got some real high
marks from various reviewers, including the not always reliable Jerry
Pournelle in his
title="Chaos Manor Xandros review">Chaos Manor (registration
required) DDJ article, so I decided to give it a whirl.
Like Pournelle mentions in his column, everything just worked out of
the box. KDE installed and worked, Samba installed and worked, the
mouse isn't wonky and all is good. I can see the other machines (both
Windows and my server running Samba) from this machine and
vice-versa. It looks nice and was real easy to update and install new
software. It took a little digging to figure out how to point the
"Xandros Networks" program (its updater and package manager) to
non-official sites, but once I did, I was able to grab Bacula and get
it running, albeit with a little pain, as I had to figure out the
dependencies myself. Ahh, for the ports functionality, sigh...
But I was very happy how well it worked out of the box and how little
work I had to do to get it running. Probably the easiest installation
of an OS I've had in ages, and that includes all flavors of
Windows. So I think I'm going to stick with Xandros for this machine
anyway. I will probably use this blog to log my work on it as well as
my FreeBSD machine.
Wednesday, December 8, 2004
Portupgrade help
Short web page on how to fix the problem where generating an INDEX in the ports tree (like via portsdb -u for instance), generates a core dump:
How to use FreeBSD ports effectively
How to use FreeBSD ports effectively
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