*BSD vs. Linux

Here's some links to some (pro-FreeBSD) pages that compare BSD to Linux. I often wonder the same myself - why did I go to BSD instead of Linux? I use Linux at work, and have installed many different Linux distros, yet I picked FreeBSD for my server. I think I like the fact that source code is still very important to the BSD community. You can always download and install something via the source code, and it is usually more painless than just about any Linux distro I've tried. I also like the model of a single source for the distribution, rather than dozens of competing development trees, although with the multiple flavors of FreeBSD these days, that might not be quite as clearcut as before.

bsd-linux-comparison

FreeBSD: An Open Source Alternative to Linux

BSD For Linux Users :: Intro

GTK Theme selector

I'm just beginning to get into FreeBSD with a GUI. My server is all text mode. So I'm not really exactly sure *what* a "GTK-Theme" is, but here is a recommended little app to help you select one that you've installed:

rico_GTK-Theme-Selector Homepage

Fancy GTK+ apps

There's a PC-BSD forum post that describes how to get "fancier" looking GTK+ (a GUI toolkit used by KDE) apps

Fancy nicer looking GTK+ apps? Apps that fall into this category include Firefox and Thunderbird. Simply run the following command from a console (as root) and restart your x session:

# pkg_add -r gtk-qt-engine

Of course, if you're like me, you'll probably want to make it from the source:

# cd /usr/ports/x11-themes/gtk-qt-engine

# make && make install && make clean

According to the FreeBSD ports page:

GTK-QT Theme Engine allows GTK2 apps to use QT (KDE) themes

More PC-BSD

Here's yet another release of PC-BSD, this time 0.8.2. It fixes a few more installation problems, including the one I'm seeing, where the"mountroot" command doesn't work when rebooting after installation. It says that the online update will pick up the changes but either that isn't working, or my installation is the 0.8 installation. It's too bad they don't label these things somewhere. You'd think a README on the root level of the ISO would say exactly which version of the ISO you have?

Anyway, a little update on my BSD follies. I still have my KVM mouse problems (sigh), but I've gone and plugged in another mouse to this box in order to get around them. My PC-BSD install went pretty smoothly, but then I ran into the above mentioned 'mountroot' problem. It seems to be trying to get the OS from the wrong slice (partition). Luckily, I barely remembered both where I installed it and the nomenclature for specifying it. I think they are having a problem with it defaulting to one (ad1s1a) no matter where you actually installed it (in my case, ad6s1a). It's 'ad6' because this is such an old box, it has a funky "fast" controller, back in the days when a UDMA 66 was fast, that isn't part of the normal 4 IDE controllers.

Anyway, I get the following error when I boot PC-BSD:

Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad1s1a

setrootbyname failed

ffs_mountroot: can't find rootvp

Root mount failed: 6

Then it gives me a little info on how to use the manual input portion of mountroot (whatever that is - it isn't documented in the handbook as far as I can tell). By using the '?' command, I get a list of the possible boot devices, and there I can see 'ad6s1a', which is the 'a' (root file system) partition (in BSD speak) of the first slice (s1) of the 7^th IDE device (like I said, it gets put way past the normal 0-3 due to the funky controller). So, if I type in:

mountroot> ufs:ad6s1a

I'm off and running.

But I'm also downloading this 0.8.2 version. I will start again from scratch. I have a big hard drive (120gb) empty, so I can play there. I will probably continue to try out PC-BSD, so as to keep my hand in the BSD game, despite the wickedly annoying KVM problem.

Development Release: PC-BSD 0.8.2 (Beta)

Blob meme - report on an old post

Via Pharyngula

Rules:

1. Go into your archive.


2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
   
   That would be from June 2003, FreeBSD Splash Screens
   


3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).


4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

This page has lots more splash and desktop screens, including some vaguely erotic and futuristic BSD Daemons:

DesktopBSD - Yet Another BSD Distro

Well, I figured I would try and install a full, GUI version of FreeBSD on my tertiary computer. It's an oldie but goodie - 800mhz overclocked Celeron, 256mb RAM, but a big hard drive. The idea, as I believe I've mentioned before, is to run a backup server, something that runs a Bacula server to back up all the other machines on my network. And to have a local FreeBSD machine to hack around on, as my FreeBSD server is now off living its own life in NH these days.

I still haven't had much luck with my KVM switch. PC-BSD just doesn't seem to recognize the mouse, and DragonFly BSD seems to rudimentary to play with. It's a long-standing problem with FreeBSD for some reason - it just doesn't see a mouse when it is hooked up via a KVM switch. Looking back through my notes here, I see where I once got FreeSBIE to work by jiggling when X start up, but I can't seem to even get that to work any more :-(

Anyway, here's Yet Another BSD distro, called DesktopBSD. I'll give it a shot...

DesktopBSD: Home

New PC-BSD release

My current favorite for user-frienlyd FreeBSD installations is PC-BSD. It actually works on my my truly lagging edge computer, which is a miracle in itself, especially the problems that my KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse) switch gives the BSD X Windows. Still not solved, as far as I'm concerned, but this distro has actually worked in the past. I'm going to put some serious effort into getting it up and running on my 800mhz(!) Celeron and see if I can't make it the backup server I was planning on.

Anyway, they just came out with version 0.8 of PC-BSD, so that's the one I'm going to go with. I downloaded the ISO and I'm ready to burn!

PC-BSD - Personal Computing, served up BSD Style!

Updated: : As a quick followup, there is now a 0.8.1 release.

FreeBSD Boot process

A couple of pointers to man pages that will help you follow the FreeBSD boot process. For the best explanation of all the stuff that appears when you boot FreeBSD, I will refer you to Chapter 29 "Starting and stopping the system" of The Complete FreeBSD, 4^th edtion. It has a great explanation of what the system does during boot, how it goes through the process, what it is telling you and how to configure it (note: I helped proofread it and got a free copy of the book, but trust me, it's worth paying for!).

This is a description of the boot process in the man pages. Start here, read it and check out the "See Also" links: boot


Here's how to tell the boot loader the options to use and even the kernal to load the next time you restart the system: nextboot


The final stage of the "bootstrap", is the loader(8)


If you use the builtin boot manager, you can use this program to configure it: boot0cfg(8)

Server Monitoring

Now that I run my main server remotely, I should probably look into monitoring software a little more. You know, software that can tell you at a glance if things are working or not. Luckily, the ISP that hosts my box, MV Communications, runs a pinger that checks to make sure the box is up and responding, so that's a basic check that covers 90% of the problems.

Anyway, I guess I should search my own archives, as I already have a post that describes two of them (Nagios and Big Brother):

Monitoring Programs

There are two others I should look into:

• 
  Munin, found in ports at sysutils/munin-main
  


• monit, found in sysutils/monit
  

FreeBSD Snapshots

Gee, a lot of cool links in today's reading of the FreeBSD-questions list! I'm way behind (only up to early August!), but I still get lots and lots of cool info and links. This time, it is a discussion on a separate partition for /boot (not really possible, I gather) and snapshots. Here's a page talking about soft updates and snapshots. They sound pretty cool, although only applicable to 5.x, so I'll need to get my new version installed and running before I can play with it.

Soft Updates and Snapshots

Postfix help

To be honest, I don't use postfix, still in the sendmail days. And even funnier, I don't even know what "TLS" and "SASL" are!-) But it seems like a very useful and complete page for setting up Postfix with "TLS and SASL", which could be a help to someone. So here goes:

Postfix with TLS and SASL

Automounting

Here's a good long explanation of "auto-mounting", the process whereby certain volumes are automatically mounted when you try to access them, and unmounts them when they seem to be unused. You shouldn't put network drives in your fstab(5), as your boot times will be much slower and it might even hang if there are network problems. By using amd, you can mount them when you actually try to access the drive.

One thing I'd be wary of is that this is a file that is 3 years old at this point. I haven't used amd all that much, and I haven't read this file over carefully, but you need to make sure the information isn't obsolete. I've added links to the handbook and man pages for the appropriate tools, so you might want to start there and only use this file if you have additional questions.

Fun With Automounting on FreeBSD

Here are the appropriate FreeBSD Handbook (the first place to go when you have questions) and man page entries:

Network File System (NFS) - 24.3.4 Automatic Mounts with amd


amd(8)


amq


amd.conf(5)

Ultimate Boot CD

A really cool diagnostic tool - the Ultimate Boot CD. It is a bootable CD-ROM that contains all kinds of diagnostic tools, from benchmarking to boot managers. Be sure to check out the Full version, which also includes the INSERT environment, which is a Knoppix derived Linux shell.

Ultimate Boot CD - Overview