Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
Hi Roland, many thanks for the response!!! :-) I waited until I had a test server setup and at least now I do.. In fact I think from my usage perspective FreeBSD is not that difficult to understand!!! I now have a test machine setup which I built nano and Bind 9.6.1 from the ports collection and I have ntp and nfs setup too. I am currently wondering what to do about the disk space as nothing is used: test# df -h Filesystem SizeUsed Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ad0s1a 34G1.2G 30G 4%/ devfs 1.0K1.0K 0B 100%/dev devfs 1.0K1.0K 0B 100%/var/named/dev If I create separate partitions for /var /usr and /tmp I am sure that I won't need that much unless I have a totally dynamic file system which will grow over time. But with minimal usage just to transfer the off file but mainly read files from as now the users are going down to 1 machine (just me) so I think with 2GB I can probably get away with it for each filesystem??? What do you say? Many thanks to everyone else that responded to this thread/post all your help and advice has been much appreciated! Regards, Kaya P.s. The good part with this is that I'm only using 23MB or memory too which is incredible considering that Linux or Solaris would take so much more. This is kinda cool.. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
Just to give a quick overview of what is being used currently: test# du -sch etc 1.7Metc 1.7Mtotal test# du -sch var 1.0Mvar 1.0Mtotal test# du -sch tmp 10Ktmp 10Ktotal test# du -sch usr 1.0Gusr 1.0Gtotal I think I could get away with 500MB for /var and /tmp and have /usr as 2 or 3GB?? What's everyone's verdict? Also I didn't realize and forgot to mention before that NFS on BSD won't export /home but instead exports the link in /usr/home. as I had issues with bad exports line /home in /var/log/messages! In addition I edited my rc.conf file to include these extra lines as per Google; what's everyone's opinion on them though as I'm a little unsure of what they do (indicated with *): inetd_enable=YES keymap=us.iso nfs_server_enable=YES *nfs_server_flags=-u -t -n 4 rpcbind_enable=YES *rpcbind_flags=-r sshd_enable=YES named_enable=YES mountd_enable=YES ntpd_enable=YES Finally for Bind I don't get why everything has been stuffed into named.conf??? In terms of all root servers etc Linux is very different in that a separate dir is created with separate file for root servers. Is there any particular reason for this?? --Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Fri, Jan 01, 2010 at 11:41:04PM +0200, Kaya Saman wrote: Hi Roland, many thanks for the response!!! :-) You're welcome! I waited until I had a test server setup and at least now I do.. In fact I think from my usage perspective FreeBSD is not that difficult to understand!!! If you're used to Solaris of Linux, it should be familiar. But there are some differences in details. I now have a test machine setup which I built nano and Bind 9.6.1 from the ports collection and I have ntp and nfs setup too. I am currently wondering what to do about the disk space as nothing is used: test# df -h Filesystem SizeUsed Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ad0s1a 34G1.2G 30G 4%/ devfs 1.0K1.0K 0B 100%/dev devfs 1.0K1.0K 0B 100%/var/named/dev If I create separate partitions for /var /usr and /tmp I am sure that I won't need that much unless I have a totally dynamic file system which will grow over time. You do realize that changing partitions will destroy your filesystems? Just so you know. :-) But with minimal usage just to transfer the off file but mainly read files from as now the users are going down to 1 machine (just me) so I think with 2GB I can probably get away with it for each filesystem??? What do you say? It really depends on what you want to do with it... How many ports do you want to install? What kind of servers do you want to run? How much data will the users generate/store? All these questions have an impact, and nobody can answer them for you. :-) You could leave it as it is for now, and just use the machine for a while, and see how big the different directories get over time. (hint; use du(1) to check the size of all files under a directory) Once you've got a feeling for how much space you need, you can backup your data (config files and user data) and do a new install where you partition the disk properly. That's the best way IMO. P.s. The good part with this is that I'm only using 23MB or memory too which is incredible considering that Linux or Solaris would take so much more. This is kinda cool.. You can reduce memory usage somewhat more by building a kernel that only contains the drivers that you need compiled in, and nothing else. If you don't build kernel modules, it will save some disk space as well. Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) pgpY7I6WIYC7K.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:49:31PM +0200, Kaya Saman wrote: Hi guys, I attempted an install of 7.2 stable on my laptop and subsequently installed X11also. Now I didn't have any Xorg.conf file but each time I tried to start X from the CLI using the normal startx command (read the documentation through fully beforehand) but I didn't manage to get the mouse or keyboard to even work let alone starting the Gnome2 interface. Beside the two daemons others refered to, you sould also edit ~/.initrc and ~/xsession. For me both have the line: 'exec startkde'. Thats the command to start kde. I am looking to setup a small file server which I will use as DNS and NTP server also. The reason for selecting FreeBSD is that the system I about to install onto doesn't have much memory (not sure how much but probably in the region of 300-500MB perhaps) and although Linux would definitely suite this kind of system as Solaris needs round 2GB or so for OpenSolaris, I am quite interested to learn FreeBSD but also take advantage of the ZFS file system which is standard now in version 8. I would stick with UFS of UFS2. The latter if you don't intent to share them with *BSD. As I understand ZFS uses quite a lot more resources. If I wanted to something with RAID I might still use it, but even so still would use UFS to the system slices. If you low on disk space you can reduce this. I have used 256M for / in the past but would advise against this. You would need something like 8G for /usr. But may need to raise that by 5G if you build ports. I have larger /temp of 7G, but also build ports there. If you build Java it would need a least 4G. I won't be installing a GUI on this machine since it is going to be a server so I would like to know if BSD has a small footprint memory and CPU wise for me to run on the machine in question which is a PIV? It's not a problem. The footprint depends more on the ports you like to run. Also just to make sure: NFS, Samba, NTPd, and ISC's Bind are all supported on FreeBSD aren't they?? Some come with the system, others you have to install. -- Alex Please copy the original recipients, otherwise I may not read your reply. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 04:20:10PM -0600, Adam Vande More wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Kaya Saman kayasa...@optiplex-networks.com Running with no xorg.conf is fine, but you need to make sure dbus and hal are started at boot. Follow the handbook for best results. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/x-config.html How come? The keybord and mouse work for me without on a simple shell. -- Alex Please copy the original recipients, otherwise I may not read your reply. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 05:04:52PM -0600, Adam Vande More wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Kaya Saman samank...@netscape.net wrote: Also if something goes wrong with the filesystem what are the tools to check the drive and repair errors as in Linux I use e2fsck followed by device ID. Example after a dirty shutdown: fsck -y FreeBSD 7 and up is able to do a lot of this on the background: fsck -yB Adding the line 'fsck_y_enable=YES' to /etc/rc.conf will run fsck -y if the initial preen fails -- Alex ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
Alex de Kruijff wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 05:04:52PM -0600, Adam Vande More wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Kaya Saman samank...@netscape.net wrote: Also if something goes wrong with the filesystem what are the tools to check the drive and repair errors as in Linux I use e2fsck followed by device ID. Example after a dirty shutdown: fsck -y FreeBSD 7 and up is able to do a lot of this on the background: fsck -yB Adding the line 'fsck_y_enable=YES' to /etc/rc.conf will run fsck -y if the initial preen fails Many thanks guys for all the advice :-) It is really appreciated! Sorry haven't snipped more stuff into this mail but things are a bit hectic here but what I will say is this; in a few hours once the BSD 8 DVD ISO comes in I will attempt an install and have a look at what's what. The server will be constructed first and then I will look at the GUI environment with Vbox. I reckon the proposed disk usage spec from the FreeBSD hand book should suffice though shouldn't it?? With a larger HD I would normally do something like 15 - 25GB / (root) partition and the rest for /home with round 1.5 - 3GB for swap. Now my HD is round 40GB so I will do a minimal install and try to maximize the /home slice! As result only services I will run are DNS, NTP, SAMBA and NFS. I suppose I could get away with something like 2GB for / which would then contain /tmp, /etc, /root, /boot etc. Only 2 machines will be connected, my uncles Win XP box and my Linux/Solaris system. --Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 05:19:54PM +0200, Kaya Saman wrote: Many thanks guys for all the advice :-) It is really appreciated! Sorry haven't snipped more stuff into this mail but things are a bit hectic here but what I will say is this; in a few hours once the BSD 8 DVD ISO comes in I will attempt an install and have a look at what's what. The server will be constructed first and then I will look at the GUI environment with Vbox. I reckon the proposed disk usage spec from the FreeBSD hand book should suffice though shouldn't it?? IMO the root slice is too small in the handbook. You should make it 2GB, since you've got the space. With a larger HD I would normally do something like 15 - 25GB / (root) partition and the rest for /home with round 1.5 - 3GB for swap. Now my HD is round 40GB so I will do a minimal install and try to maximize the /home slice! As result only services I will run are DNS, NTP, SAMBA and NFS. What is not unusual is to symlink /home e.g: # ln -s /usr/home /home ditto for /tmp. i.e you remove all the stuff that uses up space from the root partition. So the only slices you need are /, /usr, /var and swap. How I'd slice up the disk: 2GB for / 2GB for swap 2GB for /var 34GB for /usr I suppose I could get away with something like 2GB for / which would then contain /tmp, /etc, /root, /boot etc. Should be OK but /tmp symlinked to /usr/tmp as some things can really fill up /tmp. For example, IIRC OpenOffice needs gigs of temp space to build. Only 2 machines will be connected, my uncles Win XP box and my Linux/Solaris system. Should work fine. Just remember to make your /home and /tmp symlinks as soon as you first boot up. Regards, -- Frank Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
[...] What is not unusual is to symlink /home e.g: # ln -s /usr/home /home ditto for /tmp. i.e you remove all the stuff that uses up space from the root partition. So the only slices you need are /, /usr, /var and swap. How I'd slice up the disk: 2GB for / 2GB for swap 2GB for /var 34GB for /usr Ah so BSD is slightly different from Linux in the fact that it needs to have /var and /usr filesystems separate?? I guess it must be similar to the way Solaris handles things when UFS based (not ZFS). The /home partition then is very similar to Solaris in that /export/home is considered the user directory. Means BSD stores /home in /usr/home?? Should be OK but /tmp symlinked to /usr/tmp as some things can really fill up /tmp. For example, IIRC OpenOffice needs gigs of temp space to build. OpenOffice or IIRC is for GUI based usage and not CLI. Since this will be a simple server no GUI or work will be done on the machine itself in terms of keyboard/mouse setup. Normally I work through SSH so will be much easier once I have network connectivity up and running after initial install :-) Should work fine. Just remember to make your /home and /tmp symlinks as soon as you first boot up. Regards, Thanks!!! --Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Tue, 29 Dec 2009, Kaya Saman wrote: How I'd slice up the disk: 2GB for / 2GB for swap 2GB for /var 34GB for /usr Ah so BSD is slightly different from Linux in the fact that it needs to have /var and /usr filesystems separate?? It's not required, it's just nice to do if the disk space is available. You can allocate the whole disk to /. With all the free space in one filesystem, that's useful for small disks (under 8G, I'd say). Keeping the filesystems separate provides some versatility at the expense of splitting up the free space. dump(8)ing a 300M / or a 100M /var is a lot easier than a 100G whole disk. -Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 06:37:25PM +0200, Kaya Saman wrote: [...] What is not unusual is to symlink /home e.g: # ln -s /usr/home /home ditto for /tmp. i.e you remove all the stuff that uses up space from the root partition. So the only slices you need are /, /usr, /var and swap. How I'd slice up the disk: 2GB for / 2GB for swap 2GB for /var 34GB for /usr Ah so BSD is slightly different from Linux in the fact that it needs to have /var and /usr filesystems separate?? You can have /var on the same slice but because it's a filesystem that's constantly being read written to it's usual to keep it separate from your static partitions. I guess it must be similar to the way Solaris handles things when UFS based (not ZFS). The /home partition then is very similar to Solaris in that /export/home is considered the user directory. Means BSD stores /home in /usr/home?? Again, it's just a common practice. Due to the PC BIOS, IIRC you're restricted to 4 slices. Should be OK but /tmp symlinked to /usr/tmp as some things can really fill up /tmp. For example, IIRC OpenOffice needs gigs of temp space to build. OpenOffice or IIRC is for GUI based usage and not CLI. Since this will be a simple server no GUI or work will be done on the machine itself in terms of keyboard/mouse setup. Normally I work through SSH so will be much easier once I have network connectivity up and running after initial install :-) OK. You may want to make /tmp a separate slice. You can always make it a symlink into /usr at a latter date if you repurpose the machine. You would find that FreeBSD works quite well as a workstation even with that limited hardware. Should work fine. Just remember to make your /home and /tmp symlinks as soon as you first boot up. Regards, Thanks!!! BTW, you mentioned you were going to use packages. If I were you I'd build from source. It's less problematic in my experience and since FreeBSD multitasks so well it's not much of a pain. You've got plenty of room for the ports tree. Best of luck with your installation! Regards, -- Frank Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 04:27:11PM +, Frank Shute wrote: On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 05:19:54PM +0200, Kaya Saman wrote: Many thanks guys for all the advice :-) It is really appreciated! ... I reckon the proposed disk usage spec from the FreeBSD hand book should suffice though shouldn't it?? IMO the root slice is too small in the handbook. You should make it 2GB, since you've got the space. First of all, you are mixing up your terminology. You do not mean 'slice' here. The unit used for root or any other filesystem in a non-dangerously-dedicated disk is called a partition. Partitions divisions of slices and are identified as a..h with c reserved for the system and by convention (and expectation of some pieces of software) 'a' is for the bootable OS partition (root) and 'b' is used for swap. In FreeBSD, partitions reside inside of slices. A slice is essentially the same thing as a DOS primary partition and is the initial (primary) division of a disk. A disk drive may have up to four slices identified as 1..4 and each may be made bootable or not and contain different OSen or OS versions. If a disk is only to be used for a single installation of FreeBSD, it is most common to define just one slice which encompasses the whole drive, leaving the other three slices empty and unused. (It is also common to define a 'dangerously dedicated' disk, but that is a different discussion issue than that being addressed here) In FreeBSD, slices are defined and created by the FreeBSD fdisk program, though a number of other partition management utilities can be used and FreeBSD seems to be moving to a new one too. In FreeBSD, one uses bsdlabel(8) to create partitions within a slice. Each slice can have up to 8 identified as a..h, but the 'c' partition is reserved and must be left unused. We use common names associated with partitions, such as / (root) /usr, /var, /home, etc. Those are essentially directories that are 'linked' to a partition by the mount system. You create a mount point using the mkdir(1) command and then link using mount(8). The 'a' partition becomes root because it gets mounted to the / mount point. Now, on to divvying up the disk. I agree that the root partition listed in the handbook is anciently too small. But, I don't see what you need 2GB for unless you put everything (/usr, /var, etc) in it. Since you are defining those separately, root really only needs about a half GigaByte. I am running a little low on one machine with 1/3 GB in root, but still going. I also create a partition for /tmp to keep it isolated from the other filesystems, in case something runs wild. With a larger HD I would normally do something like 15 - 25GB / (root) partition and the rest for /home with round 1.5 - 3GB for swap. Now my HD is round 40GB so I will do a minimal install and try to maximize the /home slice! As result only services I will run are DNS, NTP, SAMBA and NFS. What is not unusual is to symlink /home e.g: # ln -s /usr/home /home ditto for /tmp. i.e you remove all the stuff that uses up space from the root partition. So the only slices you need are /, /usr, /var and swap. How I'd slice up the disk: 2GB for / 2GB for swap 2GB for /var 34GB for /usr I suppose I could get away with something like 2GB for / which would then contain /tmp, /etc, /root, /boot etc. My suggestion is more like: partition mount point Size a/ 512 MegaBytes (1/2 GByte) bswap 2048 MBytes (2 GBytes) d/tmp 512 MBytes e/usr 4096 MBytes f/var 4096 MBytes g/home 29 GB (eg all of the rest of the disk) If you are running a database, you will want /var to be larger or to move things in to that /home file system. I actually use a different mount point name than /home because /home is assumed for other things in some howto-s hanging around. I also move and symlink /usr/local /usr/ports /usr/src and sometimes /var/spool in to that '/home' filesystem and then make the actual /usr and /var only half the above sizes and increase the space in '/home' (33 GB) so they can grow there more easily. Things in a well running system do not grow so much in /tmp and if something does go wild and spew out a lot of stuff, you really want to notice it before it gobbles up 30GB of space, so you need enough /tmp to run easily, but do not want huge amounts. Thus, putting /tmp in its own limited partition is a bit of a protection. All users' login (home) directories and web content go in that '/home' filesystem too, where they can grow without having to redo disk later. In spite of the name that seems to suggest it, I never put users' home directories in /usr. It may have begun that way back in the
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 06:37:25PM +0200, Kaya Saman wrote: [...] What is not unusual is to symlink /home e.g: # ln -s /usr/home /home ditto for /tmp. i.e you remove all the stuff that uses up space from the root partition. So the only slices you need are /, /usr, /var and swap. How I'd slice up the disk: 2GB for / 2GB for swap 2GB for /var 34GB for /usr Ah so BSD is slightly different from Linux in the fact that it needs to have /var and /usr filesystems separate?? It doesn't _need_ to have separate filesystems. It is just convenient. If you want to stick everything (apart from swap) on a single / partition, you can do so. If that is wise is another thing. :-) If your server will never hold much data (e.g. just a router/firewall) it would probably be fine. It depends on the use you want to put the machine to, and if/where you expect to store a lot of stuff. For my desktop I tend to put /home on a separate partition because that is where most of my data is. For a server I would put the big directories where the data is stored on separate partitions. E.g. the DocumentRoot for your Apache webserver. Or whereever the place is where an SQL server stores its data. The /home partition then is very similar to Solaris in that /export/home is considered the user directory. Means BSD stores /home in /usr/home?? If you don't make a separate /home partition, sysinstall will indeed default to making /home a symlink to /usr/home, AFAIK. For my desktop, with around 450 ports installed, I have the following lay-out; Filesystem SizeUsed Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ad4s1a484M 93M353M21%/ /dev/ad4s1g.eli373G168G175G49%/home /dev/ad4s1e 48G198K 45G 0%/tmp /dev/ad4s1f 19G5.8G 12G32%/usr /dev/ad4s1d1.9G226M1.6G12%/var For swap space (/dev/ad4s1b), I reserved 2x the size of the RAM. The 'Used' column should give you an idea of the minimum space needed for different filesystems. Keep in mind that disk space is relatively cheap, and it is much better to have lots of free space then to run out of space! This division makes it easy to use dump(8) for backup purposes of /, /usr and /var. I do this so it is easy to restore(8) to a functioning system, and keep the size of the dumps reasonably small, although /usr is getting prtty big. Maybe next time I will split off /usr/local (for ports) into a separate filesystem. For big filesystems dump(8) takes a long time and needs a lot of space. I prefer to back those up with rsync(1). Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) pgpNOmODLW3A3.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 06:37:25PM +0200, Kaya Saman wrote: [...] What is not unusual is to symlink /home e.g: # ln -s /usr/home /home ditto for /tmp. i.e you remove all the stuff that uses up space from the root partition. So the only slices you need are /, /usr, /var and swap. How I'd slice up the disk: 2GB for / 2GB for swap 2GB for /var 34GB for /usr Ah so BSD is slightly different from Linux in the fact that it needs to have /var and /usr filesystems separate?? No, it doesn't. In fact, technically you can put everything all in / (root), except for swap and you can even create a file in / for that in root if you have the bad judgement to do it that way. It is just a good idea to separate them if those filesystems are likely to grow a lot, such as when installing ports (/usr in /usr/ports and /usr/local) and when building a database (/var in /var/db) or something that spools a lot (/var in /var/spool). It provides a small amount of additional protection for the system. I guess it must be similar to the way Solaris handles things when UFS based (not ZFS). The /home partition then is very similar to Solaris in that /export/home is considered the user directory. Means BSD stores /home in /usr/home?? You can put it where you like. Just do your own links or make your own mounts in /etc/fstab. Should be OK but /tmp symlinked to /usr/tmp as some things can really fill up /tmp. For example, IIRC OpenOffice needs gigs of temp space to build. OpenOffice or IIRC is for GUI based usage and not CLI. Since this will be a simple server no GUI or work will be done on the machine itself in terms of keyboard/mouse setup. Normally I work through SSH so will be much easier once I have network connectivity up and running after initial install :-) So, use 'vi' or install 'vim' from ports and us it. Since 'vi' is always available, it becomes important to learn it and then it is second nature to use it. (actually, vi is not available in single user mode if you do not have /usr mounted, but I usually just put a copy in /bin and then it is always available) jerry Should work fine. Just remember to make your /home and /tmp symlinks as soon as you first boot up. Regards, Thanks!!! --Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
Many thanks again for all suggestions! :-) [...] For my desktop, with around 450 ports installed, I have the following lay-out; Filesystem SizeUsed Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ad4s1a484M 93M353M21%/ /dev/ad4s1g.eli373G168G175G49%/home /dev/ad4s1e 48G198K 45G 0%/tmp /dev/ad4s1f 19G5.8G 12G32%/usr /dev/ad4s1d1.9G226M1.6G12%/var [...] Hmm... lot's of different pieces of advice rolling in now! I guess what I will do as I have a small hard disk for what I want to do which is to get rid of my music and few movies which are stored on my laptop currently, is create separate /, /tmp, /usr and /var. I propose which is similar to what Frank has suggested: / ~500M /tmp ~2GB /var ~2GB /usr ~2GB /home the rest but then Jerry has already suggested: partition mount point Size a/ 512 MegaBytes (1/2 GByte) bswap 2048 MBytes (2 GBytes) d/tmp 512 MBytes e/usr 4096 MBytes f/var 4096 MBytes g/home 29 GB (eg all of the rest of the disk) This could be ok I reckon as the 4GB partitions should be there as everyone has suggested for me to use ports and build from source! The reason why I preferred to use package manager was that on say Solaris it's pretty a much a pain having to install all the dependencies from Sun Freeware site. I mean what I will be installing if completely base install with just OS and nothing more like I mentioned before is Samba, NFS server/client, NTP, Nano as the quote below from Jerry using vi or vim is not my preferred text editor as I find them extremely difficult and a real pain to use. In addition I do not think this machine has a DVD drive either although I haven't fired up the Win build yet to transfer files but from what the drive says on the front of 52x looks like it's CD only :-( This means that I will need to download the minimal install CD and install the packages from there! For this reason the discussed packages above will need to be downloaded and installed my best guess is from source. Meaning I will need extra space in one of the filesystems but am unsure where the source gets stored?? My best guess would be /usr? Have setup the machine now and am almost at the point of attempted an install! :-) Guys the support has been really awsome and I highly appreciate everyones efforts to assist me! [quote] So, use 'vi' or install 'vim' from ports and us it. Since 'vi' is always available, it becomes important to learn it and then it is second nature to use it. (actually, vi is not available in single user mode if you do not have /usr mounted, but I usually just put a copy in /bin and then it is always available) [/quote] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 12:25:48PM -0500, Jerry McAllister wrote: On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 04:27:11PM +, Frank Shute wrote: On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 05:19:54PM +0200, Kaya Saman wrote: Many thanks guys for all the advice :-) It is really appreciated! ... I reckon the proposed disk usage spec from the FreeBSD hand book should suffice though shouldn't it?? IMO the root slice is too small in the handbook. You should make it 2GB, since you've got the space. First of all, you are mixing up your terminology. You do not mean 'slice' here. The unit used for root or any other filesystem in a non-dangerously-dedicated disk is called a partition. Partitions divisions of slices and are identified as a..h with c reserved for the system and by convention (and expectation of some pieces of software) 'a' is for the bootable OS partition (root) and 'b' is used for swap. You're correct. I thought they used a separate slice for the root partition. They don't. I usually do. In FreeBSD, partitions reside inside of slices. A slice is essentially the same thing as a DOS primary partition and is the initial (primary) division of a disk. A disk drive may have up to four slices identified as 1..4 and each may be made bootable or not and contain different OSen or OS versions. If a disk is only to be used for a single installation of FreeBSD, it is most common to define just one slice which encompasses the whole drive, leaving the other three slices empty and unused. (It is also common to define a 'dangerously dedicated' disk, but that is a different discussion issue than that being addressed here) In FreeBSD, slices are defined and created by the FreeBSD fdisk program, though a number of other partition management utilities can be used and FreeBSD seems to be moving to a new one too. In FreeBSD, one uses bsdlabel(8) to create partitions within a slice. Each slice can have up to 8 identified as a..h, but the 'c' partition is reserved and must be left unused. We use common names associated with partitions, such as / (root) /usr, /var, /home, etc. Those are essentially directories that are 'linked' to a partition by the mount system. You create a mount point using the mkdir(1) command and then link using mount(8). The 'a' partition becomes root because it gets mounted to the / mount point. Now, on to divvying up the disk. I agree that the root partition listed in the handbook is anciently too small. But, I don't see what you need 2GB for unless you put everything (/usr, /var, etc) in it. Since you are defining those separately, root really only needs about a half GigaByte. I am running a little low on one machine with 1/3 GB in root, but still going. I also create a partition for /tmp to keep it isolated from the other filesystems, in case something runs wild. I'm struggling with a 1GB / here: /dev/ad0s2a984524 657068 24869673%/ That's having removed /boot/kernel.old/ after running out of space during upgrading to 8.0 I can't see anything else I can delete. /home and /var are not on that slice. So I think it depends on how you upgrade your machine. E.g less room needed if you use freebsd-update (?) With a larger HD I would normally do something like 15 - 25GB / (root) partition and the rest for /home with round 1.5 - 3GB for swap. Now my HD is round 40GB so I will do a minimal install and try to maximize the /home slice! As result only services I will run are DNS, NTP, SAMBA and NFS. What is not unusual is to symlink /home e.g: # ln -s /usr/home /home ditto for /tmp. i.e you remove all the stuff that uses up space from the root partition. So the only slices you need are /, /usr, /var and swap. How I'd slice up the disk: 2GB for / 2GB for swap 2GB for /var 34GB for /usr I suppose I could get away with something like 2GB for / which would then contain /tmp, /etc, /root, /boot etc. My suggestion is more like: partition mount point Size a/ 512 MegaBytes (1/2 GByte) bswap 2048 MBytes (2 GBytes) d/tmp 512 MBytes e/usr 4096 MBytes f/var 4096 MBytes g/home 29 GB (eg all of the rest of the disk) If you are running a database, you will want /var to be larger or to move things in to that /home file system. I actually use a different mount point name than /home because /home is assumed for other things in some howto-s hanging around. I also move and symlink /usr/local /usr/ports /usr/src and sometimes /var/spool in to that '/home' filesystem and then make the actual /usr and /var only half the above sizes and increase the space in '/home' (33 GB)
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 09:06:09PM +0200, Kaya Saman wrote: lot's of different pieces of advice rolling in now! I guess what I will do as I have a small hard disk for what I want to do which is to get rid of my music and few movies which are stored on my laptop currently, is create separate /, /tmp, /usr and /var. If you can afford it, and if your laptop has a USB port, buy one of those external harddisks. Plenty of room for music and movies... Also great for backups! I propose which is similar to what Frank has suggested: / ~500M /tmp ~2GB /var ~2GB /usr ~2GB /home the rest I would make /usr greater. See below. but then Jerry has already suggested: partition mount point Size a/ 512 MegaBytes (1/2 GByte) bswap 2048 MBytes (2 GBytes) d/tmp 512 MBytes e/usr 4096 MBytes f/var 4096 MBytes g/home 29 GB (eg all of the rest of the disk) This could be ok I reckon as the 4GB partitions should be there as everyone has suggested for me to use ports and build from source! I'd make /usr bigger. 5-10 GiB, if you can spare it. The reason why I preferred to use package manager was that on say Solaris it's pretty a much a pain having to install all the dependencies from Sun Freeware site. Realize that not all software is available as packages because of e.g. licensing restrictions. And some ports you can customize via so-called options. If you install from packages, you're stuck with the (default) options used when building the packages. The FreeBSD ports system is _so_ convenient. It's one of the great features of FreeBSD, as is the user community. I mean what I will be installing if completely base install with just OS and nothing more like I mentioned before is Samba, NFS server/client, NTP, Nano as the quote below from Jerry using vi or vim is not my preferred text editor as I find them extremely difficult and a real pain to use. The ee(1) editor is part of the base system. This is a _lot_ friendlier than vi! Give it a try, you might not even need nano. In addition I do not think this machine has a DVD drive either although I haven't fired up the Win build yet to transfer files but from what the drive says on the front of 52x looks like it's CD only :-( Good enough for installing. :-) For this reason the discussed packages above will need to be downloaded and installed my best guess is from source. Installing from source is the most flexible method. How is your internet connection? Meaning I will need extra space in one of the filesystems but am unsure where the source gets stored?? My best guess would be /usr? In /usr/ports to be exact. The source code tarballs are also stored there, under /usr/ports/distfiles. On my system, /usr/ports/distfiles is now 799 MiB (450 ports, remember!). The rest of /usr/ports is 543 MiB. Realize that ports will be compiled under /usr/ports as well! Good luck! Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) pgpuZAoQom2xG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
Roland: If you can afford it, and if your laptop has a USB port, buy one of those external harddisks. Plenty of room for music and movies... Also great for backups! Can't afford :-( I have many disks like that where I bought really cool enclosures and the drives separately but currently am in a really bad situation financially. In UK in my parents house I have round 3.2TB or so with 1.7TB dedicated to music and movies. Out here though I only have my 320GB drive on my laptop which has 9 OS's on it including VM's. 160GB for Linux which I have Fedora 10 and Kubuntu on the other side I run OpenSolaris and Belenix in different ZFS pools. Laptop is cool 6GB memory too :-) ~# fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x34f7742e Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 19453 156256191 bf Solaris /dev/sda2 19454 2370934186320 83 Linux /dev/sda3 * 23710 2553414659312+ 83 Linux /dev/sda4 25535 38913 107466817+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 25535 38665 105474726 83 Linux /dev/sda6 38666 38913 1992028+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris ~# df -h FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 33G 11G 21G 34% / tmpfs 2.9G 4.0K 2.9G 1% /lib/init/rw varrun2.9G 240K 2.9G 1% /var/run varlock 2.9G 4.0K 2.9G 1% /var/lock udev 2.9G 180K 2.9G 1% /dev tmpfs 2.9G 708K 2.9G 1% /dev/shm lrm 2.9G 2.5M 2.9G 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-17-generic/volatile /dev/sda5 100G 93G 1.2G 99% /home /dev/sda3 14G 9.6G 3.6G 74% /mnt/tmp I propose which is similar to what Frank has suggested: / ~500M /tmp ~2GB /var ~2GB /usr ~2GB /home the rest I would make /usr greater. See below. but then Jerry has already suggested: partition mount point Size a/ 512 MegaBytes (1/2 GByte) bswap 2048 MBytes (2 GBytes) d/tmp 512 MBytes e/usr 4096 MBytes f/var 4096 MBytes g/home 29 GB (eg all of the rest of the disk) This could be ok I reckon as the 4GB partitions should be there as everyone has suggested for me to use ports and build from source! I'd make /usr bigger. 5-10 GiB, if you can spare it. Err I will try 4GB because I need to dump round 10-15GB here clogging up my disks. In fact I just partitioned the drive using FreeBSIE and I think it's only a 30GB on this desktop which I can always look into getting a new one in time. But slightly stuck for now! Realize that not all software is available as packages because of e.g. licensing restrictions. And some ports you can customize via so-called options. If you install from packages, you're stuck with the (default) options used when building the packages. The FreeBSD ports system is _so_ convenient. It's one of the great features of FreeBSD, as is the user community. I just the packages I mentioned before that's it! If I can do that it will be really cool. The ee(1) editor is part of the base system. This is a _lot_ friendlier than vi! Give it a try, you might not even need nano. I will try it out thanks for that! :-) In addition I do not think this machine has a DVD drive either although I haven't fired up the Win build yet to transfer files but from what the drive says on the front of 52x looks like it's CD only :-( Good enough for installing. :-) For this reason the discussed packages above will need to be downloaded and installed my best guess is from source. Installing from source is the most flexible method. How is your internet connection? Hahahah the biggest joke of 2k9 is my internet as it's 512kbps :-( That's what happens when you move country to a developing one things slow down to a halt. In UK I had 20Mbps h I really miss it! Meaning I will need extra space in one of the filesystems but am unsure where the source gets stored?? My best guess would be /usr? In /usr/ports to be exact. The source code tarballs are also stored there, under /usr/ports/distfiles. On my system, /usr/ports/distfiles is now 799 MiB (450 ports, remember!). The rest of /usr/ports is 543 MiB. Realize that ports will be compiled under /usr/ports as well! Ah ok I will look at this once my install progresses, I just hope that 4GB is enough for this! I really need to maximize space for /home where all my stuff will be deposited to for the moment as I don't trust the drive either as it really grinds like crazy but then it might be MS Win doing that? Good luck! Roland Many
New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
Hi guys, first up I hope I am in the right place as my questions are of a generic nature about FreeBSD as I consider myself a new user not having much mileage with the OS as of yet! Secondly I just wanted to wish everyone a happy Christmas and New Year also since we are in that period :-) I will start with my GUI question as I believe that it is something simple: I attempted an install of 7.2 stable on my laptop and subsequently installed X11also. Now I didn't have any Xorg.conf file but each time I tried to start X from the CLI using the normal startx command (read the documentation through fully beforehand) but I didn't manage to get the mouse or keyboard to even work let alone starting the Gnome2 interface. Now I don't have that particular machine with me now as it's in another country but just wanted to know a few possible causes for the issue. I am guessing it's probably tied into not having the xorg.conf file but I will install a VM of it soon and be more specific with logs etc as I am used to Linux and Sun Solaris I know this is really ad-hoc and frowned upon way of asking which will probably earn me minus brownie points but just wanted a quick idea of what maybe so when the time comes I can investigate further! The second and main question that I wish to ask is more to do with peoples opinions or experienced BSD users advice: I am looking to setup a small file server which I will use as DNS and NTP server also. The reason for selecting FreeBSD is that the system I about to install onto doesn't have much memory (not sure how much but probably in the region of 300-500MB perhaps) and although Linux would definitely suite this kind of system as Solaris needs round 2GB or so for OpenSolaris, I am quite interested to learn FreeBSD but also take advantage of the ZFS file system which is standard now in version 8. I won't be installing a GUI on this machine since it is going to be a server so I would like to know if BSD has a small footprint memory and CPU wise for me to run on the machine in question which is a PIV? Also just to make sure: NFS, Samba, NTPd, and ISC's Bind are all supported on FreeBSD aren't they?? I know this is a bit of an RTFM issue here but for example the Solaris implementation of NTP and even SNMP are slightly different from the GNU or GPL based ones in Linux so therefor I have to ask :-) Many thanks for any responses Best regards, Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Kaya Saman kayasa...@optiplex-networks.com wrote: Hi guys, first up I hope I am in the right place as my questions are of a generic nature about FreeBSD as I consider myself a new user not having much mileage with the OS as of yet! Secondly I just wanted to wish everyone a happy Christmas and New Year also since we are in that period :-) I will start with my GUI question as I believe that it is something simple: I attempted an install of 7.2 stable on my laptop and subsequently installed X11also. Now I didn't have any Xorg.conf file but each time I tried to start X from the CLI using the normal startx command (read the documentation through fully beforehand) but I didn't manage to get the mouse or keyboard to even work let alone starting the Gnome2 interface. Now I don't have that particular machine with me now as it's in another country but just wanted to know a few possible causes for the issue. I am guessing it's probably tied into not having the xorg.conf file but I will install a VM of it soon and be more specific with logs etc as I am used to Linux and Sun Solaris I know this is really ad-hoc and frowned upon way of asking which will probably earn me minus brownie points but just wanted a quick idea of what maybe so when the time comes I can investigate further! Running with no xorg.conf is fine, but you need to make sure dbus and hal are started at boot. Follow the handbook for best results. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/x-config.html The second and main question that I wish to ask is more to do with peoples opinions or experienced BSD users advice: I am looking to setup a small file server which I will use as DNS and NTP server also. The reason for selecting FreeBSD is that the system I about to install onto doesn't have much memory (not sure how much but probably in the region of 300-500MB perhaps) and although Linux would definitely suite this kind of system as Solaris needs round 2GB or so for OpenSolaris, I am quite interested to learn FreeBSD but also take advantage of the ZFS file system which is standard now in version 8. I won't be installing a GUI on this machine since it is going to be a server so I would like to know if BSD has a small footprint memory and CPU wise for me to run on the machine in question which is a PIV? Also just to make sure: NFS, Samba, NTPd, and ISC's Bind are all supported on FreeBSD aren't they?? I know this is a bit of an RTFM issue here but for example the Solaris implementation of NTP and even SNMP are slightly different from the GNU or GPL based ones in Linux so therefor I have to ask :-) If you're concerned about system resources, at least from a minimalist perspective, then ZFS is not for you. Solaris can't help you with that either, ZFS is hungry. ZFS is also not standard, but considered production ready. UFS is still the standard, and the only filesystem supported by the installer without resorting to tricks. All the other services work well on FreeBSD. -- Adam Vande More ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
Running with no xorg.conf is fine, but you need to make sure dbus and hal are started at boot. Follow the handbook for best results. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/x-config.html I'm sure I started them as this doc is exactly what I followed.. I think if I recall correctly or at least something like it?? Anyway as explained I will use Vbox to check 100% and then at least have proper logs and cli output to compare to and give everyone an idea of what's going on unlike now! If you're concerned about system resources, at least from a minimalist perspective, then ZFS is not for you. Solaris can't help you with that either, ZFS is hungry. ZFS is also not standard, but considered production ready. UFS is still the standard, and the only filesystem supported by the installer without resorting to tricks. Yes ZFS is hungry :-) I run Solaris 10 on an ancient Sun Netra T105 server with 360MB of RAM which uses ZFS file system and apart being a reverse proxy it won't handle anything else easily. Also my E420r server with 1GB of RAM running Sun Ray software is limited to just that and can only handle 1 Ray unit on top of the SXCE (Solaris Express Community Edition) OS. I know how strong UFS v.1 is as I use it with Solaris 9, but how about UFS v.2 which is what FreeBSD runs?? When compared with ext3 from a performance/reliability perspective which one comes on top? Also if something goes wrong with the filesystem what are the tools to check the drive and repair errors as in Linux I use e2fsck followed by device ID. As mention UFS v.1 is incredibly strong especially when run on SCSI II drives that the Sun Netra T105 uses so I haven't had an FS failure yet and if UFS v.2 is similar I don't suspect having a failure either although this machine will have IDE drives and uses x86 architecture as opposed to SPARC. In fact I am only really after ZFS for its self healing properties as I don't mind going with any file system as long as it's stable. Ext3 although easily repairable is quite unstable on my systems anyway! All the other services work well on FreeBSD. -- Adam Vande More Cool, thanks Adam! :-) I appreciate the response. Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Kaya Saman samank...@netscape.net wrote: I know how strong UFS v.1 is as I use it with Solaris 9, but how about UFS v.2 which is what FreeBSD runs?? When compared with ext3 from a performance/reliability perspective which one comes on top? I would say ufs2 easily wins, but remember this is the freebsd-questions list ;) There are some differences though, ufs2 uses softupdates, not journaling(journaling is available and easy to implement via gjournal). Softupdates I believe are a little faster than journaling, but it's drawback is long disk checking after a dirty shutdown. I've never had a ufs specific issue in hundreds if not thousands of deployments, but nothing is guaranteed. ufs does have a great track records and bunch of service hours logged. Also if something goes wrong with the filesystem what are the tools to check the drive and repair errors as in Linux I use e2fsck followed by device ID. Example after a dirty shutdown: fsck -y In fact I am only really after ZFS for its self healing properties as I don't mind going with any file system as long as it's stable. Ext3 although easily repairable is quite unstable on my systems anyway! That's actually a bit disconcerting, do you have hardware instability? -- Adam Vande More ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 14:42, Kaya Saman samank...@netscape.net wrote: Running with no xorg.conf is fine, but you need to make sure dbus and hal are started at boot. Follow the handbook for best results. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/x-config.html I'm sure I started them as this doc is exactly what I followed.. I think if I recall correctly or at least something like it?? Anyway as explained I will use Vbox to check 100% and then at least have proper logs and cli output to compare to and give everyone an idea of what's going on unlike now! I can't speak to the rest, but WRT the GUI, I suspect you'll find it a lot easier if you install a Window Manager to handle a lot of this. I have found xfce4 to be a good one for me - gnome and kde were a bit much. Once I installed /usr/ports/x11-wm/xfce4 with a 'make config-recursive' then chose my options, then 'make install', the GUI fired up just fine, and all of the hal/dbus stuff was handled for me. Kurt ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
I would say ufs2 easily wins, but remember this is the freebsd-questions list ;) There are some differences though, ufs2 uses softupdates, not journaling(journaling is available and easy to implement via gjournal). Softupdates I believe are a little faster than journaling, but it's drawback is long disk checking after a dirty shutdown. I've never had a ufs specific issue in hundreds if not thousands of deployments, but nothing is guaranteed. ufs does have a great track records and bunch of service hours logged. Cool meaning I am going UFS2 on my new install! Example after a dirty shutdown: fsck -y Aaah fsck :-) If I run this on an ext3 FS it tends to make things much worse as I did it once and got left with a whole bunch of unattached inodes :-( reason for Linux and ext3 e2fsck is much better I have found from personal experience! That's actually a bit disconcerting, do you have hardware instability? Nope! These systems are actually desktop systems which I run as servers as I couldn't afford to buy proper systems so got a whole bunch of cheap x86 boxes off Ebay. If running Scalix though I found it really eats up hard drives - although running a collaboration suite on a laptop is not the most intelligent thing to do but then what else can you do with a portable computer with bust LCD display? Left in my parents house in the UK now as I'm currently in Turkey but my lab from scavenged parts and systems: http://www.optiplex-networks.com/lab/lab.html -- Adam Vande More Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
I can't speak to the rest, but WRT the GUI, I suspect you'll find it a lot easier if you install a Window Manager to handle a lot of this. I have found xfce4 to be a good one for me - gnome and kde were a bit much. Once I installed /usr/ports/x11-wm/xfce4 with a 'make config-recursive' then chose my options, then 'make install', the GUI fired up just fine, and all of the hal/dbus stuff was handled for me. Kurt I thought Gnome already came with Nautilus as Window manager??? Or in FreeBSD is it extra? Sorry am not used to doing things from scratch but soon I will get the hang of it - just give me a couple of days to get the file server I am on about up and running then will transfer the stuff clogging my notebooks HD over there and install a VM through Vbox and really have a go at understanding the GUI. I did play around with FreeBSIE which is FreeBSD with the GUI installed as a live CD which was really cool and light and worked especially well on my 512MB RAM laptop. Now I don't have a memory issue as I have 6GB on a newer machine running 64bit OS's all the way but still need to get to grips with this :-) Thanks for the tip Kurt! Regards, --Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Monday 28 December 2009 22:49:31 Kaya Saman wrote: Hi guys, first up I hope I am in the right place as my questions are of a generic nature about FreeBSD as I consider myself a new user not having much mileage with the OS as of yet! Secondly I just wanted to wish everyone a happy Christmas and New Year also since we are in that period :-) I will start with my GUI question as I believe that it is something simple: I attempted an install of 7.2 stable on my laptop and subsequently installed X11also. Now I didn't have any Xorg.conf file but each time I tried to start X from the CLI using the normal startx command (read the documentation through fully beforehand) but I didn't manage to get the mouse or keyboard to even work let alone starting the Gnome2 interface. The most common cause is that either hald (sysutils/hal) or dbus (devel/dbus) isn't running. Xorg needs them both to detect mouse and keyboard. Add dbus_enable=YES and hald_enable=YES to rc.conf to get them to start automatically. Now I don't have that particular machine with me now as it's in another country but just wanted to know a few possible causes for the issue. I am guessing it's probably tied into not having the xorg.conf file but I will install a VM of it soon and be more specific with logs etc as I am used to Linux and Sun Solaris I know this is really ad-hoc and frowned upon way of asking which will probably earn me minus brownie points but just wanted a quick idea of what maybe so when the time comes I can investigate further! The second and main question that I wish to ask is more to do with peoples opinions or experienced BSD users advice: I am looking to setup a small file server which I will use as DNS and NTP server also. The reason for selecting FreeBSD is that the system I about to install onto doesn't have much memory (not sure how much but probably in the region of 300-500MB perhaps) and although Linux would definitely suite this kind of system as Solaris needs round 2GB or so for OpenSolaris, I am quite interested to learn FreeBSD but also take advantage of the ZFS file system which is standard now in version 8. I agree with Adam Vande More's opinion that UFS2 is the way to go on such a low memory system. UFS2 also works well with large disks (1+ TB) if you tune the newfs parameters a bit (mainly to shorten the fsck time). With geom(8) you can do all kinds of mirroring/striping if you're into RAID. With regards to stability, UFS2 was before the import of ZFS the only filesystem widely used. It is very well tested, and in my opinion, very stable. In fact, I can't remember ever having a UFS2 filesystem go bad to the point I couldn't repair it anymore. If you're expecting lots of power outages, it may be worthwile to set up journaling using gjournal(8), which will reduce fsck times considerably, at the cost of reduced streaming write speed (which will halve unless a dedicated journal disk is used). I won't be installing a GUI on this machine since it is going to be a server so I would like to know if BSD has a small footprint memory and CPU wise for me to run on the machine in question which is a PIV? That won't be a problem. To illustrate, FreeBSD on a 256MB (i386) machine has about 211MB memory free just after startup. To be safe you could configure a large swap, so the system won't kill the memory hogs as soon as it runs out of memory. Also just to make sure: NFS, Samba, NTPd, and ISC's Bind are all supported on FreeBSD aren't they?? I know this is a bit of an RTFM issue here but for example the Solaris implementation of NTP and even SNMP are slightly different from the GNU or GPL based ones in Linux so therefor I have to ask :-) NFS, BIND, SNMP (bsnmpd) and NTP come with the OS and are installed by default. Samba can be installed from ports. Many thanks for any responses Best regards, Kaya Good luck! Pieter ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 15:29, Kaya Saman samank...@netscape.net wrote: I can't speak to the rest, but WRT the GUI, I suspect you'll find it a lot easier if you install a Window Manager to handle a lot of this. I have found xfce4 to be a good one for me - gnome and kde were a bit much. Once I installed /usr/ports/x11-wm/xfce4 with a 'make config-recursive' then chose my options, then 'make install', the GUI fired up just fine, and all of the hal/dbus stuff was handled for me. Kurt I thought Gnome already came with Nautilus as Window manager??? Or in FreeBSD is it extra? I see I didn't completely read your original message. Indulge me a moment while I ramble here, and probably expose my ignorance... Xorg/X11 Gnome Nautilis is a file manager, unless I misremember. The native file manager for xfce4 is Thunar. Gnome, like xfce4 (and ratpoison, kde, etc.) is a Window Manager, which depends on Xorg/X11 to function. WMs are usually installed installed after Xorg. Did you install gnome from source, or did you use 'pkg_add -r'? I don't know why, but I seem to have better luck, though it takes much longer, if I use 'make install' from the ports tree. Sorry am not used to doing things from scratch but soon I will get the hang of it - just give me a couple of days to get the file server I am on about up and running then will transfer the stuff clogging my notebooks HD over there and install a VM through Vbox and really have a go at understanding the GUI. I'm not far along that learning curve myself. Heh. I started on an old Toshiba laptop with 256mbytes RAM, and Freesbie worked well on that. I then learned how to install from scratch. That was, um, interesting. I hated Linux, as it seems so arcane. Well, perhaps 'hate' is too strong a word, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Once I worked with FreeBSD, it became much more clear. Things seem to be done more sanely in FreeBSD. Now I have a nice 4gbyte Lenovo T61, and I still like xfce4 - it does what I want, and I didn't want to expend the effort to learn anything new. I did play around with FreeBSIE which is FreeBSD with the GUI installed as a live CD which was really cool and light and worked especially well on my 512MB RAM laptop. Now I don't have a memory issue as I have 6GB on a newer machine running 64bit OS's all the way but still need to get to grips with this :-) If you're very familiar with gnome, you might wish to stay with it. If you're just learning, for both gnome and xfce4, my preference would be for xfce4. But that's just me, and you'll get at least 10 different answers from the first 8 people you meet. Thanks for the tip Kurt! Regards, --Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
The most common cause is that either hald (sysutils/hal) or dbus (devel/dbus) isn't running. Xorg needs them both to detect mouse and keyboard. Add dbus_enable=YES and hald_enable=YES to rc.conf to get them to start automatically. We'll see what the issue actually is - as I mentioned I kinda stuffed this question in without any proper log or tty output to support anything I mentioned which is quite ad-hoc and not recommended on mailing lists of this caliber unless wanting to irritate the participants. Just need to clear up my notebooks drive first before setting up the VM environment to test! I agree with Adam Vande More's opinion that UFS2 is the way to go on such a low memory system. UFS2 also works well with large disks (1+ TB) if you tune the newfs parameters a bit (mainly to shorten the fsck time). With geom(8) you can do all kinds of mirroring/striping if you're into RAID. With regards to stability, UFS2 was before the import of ZFS the only filesystem widely used. It is very well tested, and in my opinion, very stable. In fact, I can't remember ever having a UFS2 filesystem go bad to the point I couldn't repair it anymore. If you're expecting lots of power outages, it may be worthwile to set up journaling using gjournal(8), which will reduce fsck times considerably, at the cost of reduced streaming write speed (which will halve unless a dedicated journal disk is used). I agree also and thank you guys for your opinions! As mentioned I know UFS1 from Solaris 9 on my SPARC systems and have never had any issues with it at all. Hang on what are these things called slices and this wacky naming convention I thought disks where labeled hdax or sdax according to the partition :-P sorry internal joke! That won't be a problem. To illustrate, FreeBSD on a 256MB (i386) machine has about 211MB memory free just after startup. To be safe you could configure a large swap, so the system won't kill the memory hogs as soon as it runs out of memory. Yeah I reckon large swap also! Usually round 2 or 3 times amount of memory but for everyday generic use I find about 1.5 - 3 gigs is enough. This is the good part of static filesystems I find over ZFS is that the swap space is easily tunable without editing ZFS pools or other. NFS, BIND, SNMP (bsnmpd) and NTP come with the OS and are installed by default. Samba can be installed from ports. Hmm I will need a bit of assistance for the ports part as I'm kinda used to Debian backports through the Apt repos but BSD ports is something quite different. I'm sure there's plenty of documentation on the web to find out how to install and implement! bsnmpd sounds to me more like snmpx from Solaris in terms of that it is different from opensnmpd. Not a problem won't be doing any SNMP monitoring right now as I don't have anything to monitor as my router isn't even my beloved Cisco at the mo. When I have more memory I will play around with SNMP monitoring software if available for BSD, and my all time favorite: Cacti. Good luck! Pieter Thanks a lot Pieter --Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
Kurt Buff wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 15:29, Kaya Saman samank...@netscape.net wrote: I see I didn't completely read your original message. Indulge me a moment while I ramble here, and probably expose my ignorance... Xorg/X11 Gnome Gnome runs on Xorg: Xorg/Xfree runs X11 Xfree is now obsolete as Xorg is much better. Nautilis is a file manager, unless I misremember. The native file manager for xfce4 is Thunar. Gnome, like xfce4 (and ratpoison, kde, etc.) is a Window Manager, which depends on Xorg/X11 to function. WMs are usually installed installed after Xorg. Correct on both counts :-) Did you install gnome from source, or did you use 'pkg_add -r'? I don't know why, but I seem to have better luck, though it takes much longer, if I use 'make install' from the ports tree. I used pkg_add! Am such a package manager guy as although have compiled quite a bit of stuff I find on some systems such as Sun Solaris compiling can be a nightmare. Especially if it means hacking out source code and using special make parameters as I'm not a programmer but also not that far advanced when it comes down to building software from scratch! I'm not far along that learning curve myself. Heh. I started on an old Toshiba laptop with 256mbytes RAM, and Freesbie worked well on that. I then learned how to install from scratch. That was, um, interesting. I hated Linux, as it seems so arcane. Well, perhaps 'hate' is too strong a word, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Once I worked with FreeBSD, it became much more clear. Things seem to be done more sanely in FreeBSD. Now I have a nice 4gbyte Lenovo T61, and I still like xfce4 - it does what I want, and I didn't want to expend the effort to learn anything new. Well, Linux has its advantages and for the last 2 years have completely used it as an M$ Windowz replacement as one can do almost everything on it. When I meant; not used to doing things from scratch I meant building the OS. I actually prefer doing a minimal install of CentOS with no software or GUI at all and then building the system up to what I need when it comes down to servers!!! Means I can fine tune the system that way and only use the system resources for what I need. Being a user of both Solaris and Linux though, they are both pretty cool with Solaris only hindered by lack of software and multimedia apps. Otherwise I think Solaris in Open guise would win anyday provided that the H/W support was as vast as Linux. If you're very familiar with gnome, you might wish to stay with it. If you're just learning, for both gnome and xfce4, my preference would be for xfce4. But that's just me, and you'll get at least 10 different answers from the first 8 people you meet. Have played round with everything including KDE3/4, XFCE, Blackbox, Fluxbox, Window Maker, CDE (on Solaris).. Wish there was something more, new and interesting but they're all a bit bland after a while. Gnome I find is more functional! If anyone has any idea of getting something like they use on TV shows like NCIS and CSI that would be really cool (not Hollywood OS) or something they use in the military that one sees on the discovery channel say on the US Navy ships. I mean I do develop GUI's for the OpenSolaris spin-off distro Belenix which can be seen here: http://www.optiplex-networks.com/belenix/index_belenix.html under themes. But really need a new concept of completely tricked out geeky 'suped' up WM. Lot's of bar graphs, text outputs and other really cool stuff embedded into it :-) - no need for Gkrellm or Conky or Torsmo anymore! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
Adam Vande More wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Kaya Saman kayasa...@optiplex-networks.com wrote: Hi guys, I attempted an install of 7.2 stable on my laptop and subsequently installed X11also. Now I didn't have any Xorg.conf file but each time I tried to start X from the CLI using the normal startx command (read the documentation through fully beforehand) but I didn't manage to get the mouse or keyboard to even work let alone starting the Gnome2 interface. Running with no xorg.conf is fine, but you need to make sure dbus and hal are started at boot. Follow the handbook for best results. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/x-config.html I don't know if I'd be too happy to agree on that ... while the answer IS correctfrom a narrow point of view, the documentation on both dbus and hal is very, VERY thin on the ground (and what exists is for Linux only), so if the setup programmed into the port isn't right for your particular FreeBSD machine, you can pretty much forget about getting enough info to fix things. Realize that both hal and dbus were written for Linux (not a particularly portable thing), and it was only because of FreeBSD porters that it works at all under FreeBSD, so the docs that come with them understand Linux only. You can't even find out how to fix the config files for FreeBSD. Trying to fix even the most minor problem is really climbing mountains. Much, much easier to fix up an xorg.conf, which is not only well documented, but has tools to generate you a good local setup for your particular machine. If dbus/hal happen to work for you right out of the FreeBSD port, well, that's great, but if you need to adapt things for use outside of Linux, good luck, fella. The folks who wrote our FreeBSD dbus and hal implementations did a good job of translating things which are VERY Linux-centric to FreeBSD, but it's still only really good for a default FreeBSD setup. I know that it didn't work for anything but a thin slice of default environments, in the FreeBSD-7.x release era. Some day, if when the Linux developers are ready to admit there are other OSes and document things more portably, both tools are really, really fine ideas. Maybe ask again in 6 months to a year? Or, get ready to read a lot of source code and figure it out for yourself. Right now looking at what email I can find on the web regarding running hal dbus on 7.2, no one else can find an easy fund of knowledge either. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 16:23, Kaya Saman samank...@netscape.net wrote: snip So, given what you've written below, you probably know more about this stuff than I do. Cool. I will echo the advice already given, however: add dbus_enable=YES hald_enable=YES to your /etc/rc.conf. That will most likely clear your problem. Did you install gnome from source, or did you use 'pkg_add -r'? I don't know why, but I seem to have better luck, though it takes much longer, if I use 'make install' from the ports tree. I used pkg_add! Am such a package manager guy as although have compiled quite a bit of stuff I find on some systems such as Sun Solaris compiling can be a nightmare. Especially if it means hacking out source code and using special make parameters as I'm not a programmer but also not that far advanced when it comes down to building software from scratch! I'm not far along that learning curve myself. Heh. I started on an old Toshiba laptop with 256mbytes RAM, and Freesbie worked well on that. I then learned how to install from scratch. That was, um, interesting. I hated Linux, as it seems so arcane. Well, perhaps 'hate' is too strong a word, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Once I worked with FreeBSD, it became much more clear. Things seem to be done more sanely in FreeBSD. Now I have a nice 4gbyte Lenovo T61, and I still like xfce4 - it does what I want, and I didn't want to expend the effort to learn anything new. Well, Linux has its advantages and for the last 2 years have completely used it as an M$ Windowz replacement as one can do almost everything on it. When I meant; not used to doing things from scratch I meant building the OS. I actually prefer doing a minimal install of CentOS with no software or GUI at all and then building the system up to what I need when it comes down to servers!!! Means I can fine tune the system that way and only use the system resources for what I need. That's what I do with mine under FreeBSD, for both servers and workstations. Being a user of both Solaris and Linux though, they are both pretty cool with Solaris only hindered by lack of software and multimedia apps. Otherwise I think Solaris in Open guise would win anyday provided that the H/W support was as vast as Linux. I need to dive back into Linux - I want to figure out Xen now that it can do live migrations/failover, and FreeBSD doesn't do Dom0 - yet. So, I'll probably try out CentOS, though I suppose I could use NetBSD. Wish there was something more, new and interesting but they're all a bit bland after a while. Gnome I find is more functional! If anyone has any idea of getting something like they use on TV shows like NCIS and CSI that would be really cool (not Hollywood OS) or something they use in the military that one sees on the discovery channel say on the US Navy ships. I mean I do develop GUI's for the OpenSolaris spin-off distro Belenix which can be seen here: http://www.optiplex-networks.com/belenix/index_belenix.html under themes. But really need a new concept of completely tricked out geeky 'suped' up WM. Lot's of bar graphs, text outputs and other really cool stuff embedded into it :-) - no need for Gkrellm or Conky or Torsmo anymore! Eh. I just want something that works and keeps out of my way - xfce seems to do that just fine. For me, 'cool' is the apps and what I can do with them. Kurt ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question
[...] add dbus_enable=YES hald_enable=YES to your /etc/rc.conf. That will most likely clear your problem. [...] I will give this a go soon :-) That's what I do with mine under FreeBSD, for both servers and workstations. Having both servers and workstations is cool as both of them need to be looked at very differently! I like having Linux for desktop systems due to the full multimedia traits of it. I mean Debian or Ubuntu is pretty cool, Red Hat based Fedora is problematic as by default some packages don't work properly so you end up having to hack around the problem. Also multimedia is a slight pain in Fedora due to having to add extra repos to get things like MP3's working since there is some licensing issue. For servers one can pretty much install anything just for raw services. However when one starts considering performance attributes such as disk write speed, ease of adding storage, memory usage, security etc into the equation then one must side with one of the UNIX's around. Different UNIX versions have different strengths and weaknesses but it is nice to get to know as many as possible in order to actually identify and see these attributes in live real time so that in a professional capacity one has the experience to choose the correct system for the task at hand. I need to dive back into Linux - I want to figure out Xen now that it can do live migrations/failover, and FreeBSD doesn't do Dom0 - yet. So, I'll probably try out CentOS, though I suppose I could use NetBSD. Aaaah yes Citrix Xen, it's cool - read the manual but haven't played with it. Yeah I would run Linux just in case there are some things you wish to do but can't in BSD although I can't comment on the differences as I haven't seen them myself yet. I am really a big fan of testing systems on Suns Virtual Box! Is almost like running a disposable OS. Plug in and play then throw away until you need a proper H/W install :-) Eh. I just want something that works and keeps out of my way - xfce seems to do that just fine. For me, 'cool' is the apps and what I can do with them. Hahahaha :-) As long as I can listen to music and watch videos I am ok, oh as well as browse web, check mail and use the occasional office app. the rest is all CLI for me.. However I will use a few more things too rarely - even 3D games. I do like flashy screens though that no body can understand apart from a trained operator :-P - tried this with normal lighting effect too as I tried to emulate an aircraft landing strip with Christmas tree lights. Where I live currently is like a complex with a few houses enclosed in a site with private security etc. Anyway we put my lighting effect in the entrance and before we knew it rained blowing out everything even the backup generator and almost electrocuting everyone living inside... it was so embarrassing for that to happen to a person with an electrical/electronic engineering degree :-O h oh well! I blame the site manager as he bought indoor lights as they were cheap!!! --Kaya ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
