Planning a FreeBSD desktop, basic questions.
Hello! My apologies for the length of this post. Summary: 4.x or 5.x for a desktop machine, disk partitioning for a workstation, miscellaneous installation questions. Okay, the details! Now that I have my local FreeBSD server (mail/news, router, firewall) successfully running, I'm ready to tackle my workstation. This is currently a system with a P4-2.6Ghz, 512MB RAM, an 80GB EIDE disk, and the usual devices (CDR, CD/DVD player, network adapter and so on). At this time it is running Windows XP, and I plan to keep it where it is. To avoid having two operating systems on the same disk, I've purchased an identical HD (WD800BB) where FreeBSD will live on. Since I don't download movies or obscene amounts of MP3s, this is all a bit spacey. The XP disk only uses 35 of 80GB and I doubt the FreeBSD one will even be this full. How times change. :) 4.8 or 5.1? My personal server happily runs 4.8R and will be updated to 4.9 when -stable becomes a bit more stable. It consists of older hardware and I don't plan to upgrade it to 5.x any time soon, if ever. But what do you recommend for the workstation? It doesn't have dual-processors and all of its hardware seems to be supported by 4.x. This machine, though, will eventually get 5.x. I'm wondering if it makes sense to put 4.8 on it now or if it would be a better choice to just go with 5.1R. My primary concern here is ease of upgrading. Will it be difficult to go from 4.9 to 5.2, somewhere down the road? Mergemaster is a rather scary looking critter. Differently put, will there be tools provided to allow this without too much fiddling? Partitions If anything brings out the perfectionist in me, it is figuring out how to partition a disk. What I have in mind for the 80GB FreeBSD disk for the workstation is this: / = 512MB (too spacey, but that should be plenty for future releases) swap = 3GB (see notes below) /var = 1GB (probably too much, but the room's there) /tmp = 1GB (256MB would probably be enough, but why not?) /usr = the rest (essentially 74GB) The machine currently has 512MB of RAM, but since I won't have the financial means or desire to get a new complete system in the next two to four years, it's possible that I'll upgrade the memory first to 1GB and later to 1.5GB if needed or wanted. 3GB would then be an acceptable amount of swap space, but I certainly won't need this much right now, and I might never. Am I overdoing it, or doesn't it really matter since I don't seem to lack storage room anyway? Then there's this huge /usr partition. 74GB. I thought about splitting this between /home and /usr, but I have honestly no idea (and experience) how much space I'll end up using where. It probably wouldn't matter since I won't need more 30 or 40GB of that space. There's also the possibility that I might end up using the second disk (another 80GB one that currently belongs to XP) for FreeBSD also. That would then be for /home, if for some unexpected reason I should need more space. In other words, I would like to keep this option open. This workstation won't hold critical data, so I do not plan on backing up entire partitions. If all of this is inefficient and I'm missing the obvious, please let me know. Keep in mind that I -am- new to the FreeBSD and Unix world. I'm open for suggestions here. Miscellaneous - FreeBSD will be on the second disk. Is Sysinstall, if FreeBSD is installed on the slave, going to ask if I'd like to put the BootMgr on the first drive? - In case I decide to make the second disk (with FreeBSD) the master drive some time in the not-so-near future, will it be fairly simple to accomplish this? Only jumper rearrangement, MBR and fstab editing? - Anything else I need to pay particular attention to? Besides backing up important files on the XP disk in case something goes wrong. Thanks! Cheers, Michael ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Planning a FreeBSD desktop, basic questions.
On Friday 05 September 2003 10:01 am, Michael Vondung wrote: Hello! My apologies for the length of this post. Summary: 4.x or 5.x for a desktop machine, disk partitioning for a workstation, miscellaneous installation questions. Okay, the details! Now that I have my local FreeBSD server (mail/news, router, firewall) successfully running, I'm ready to tackle my workstation. Consider running Samba. This will allow you to backup your files from your Windows XP hard drive to your server easily. This is currently a system with a P4-2.6Ghz, 512MB RAM, an 80GB EIDE disk, and the usual devices (CDR, CD/DVD player, network adapter and so on). At this time it is running Windows XP, and I plan to keep it where it is. To avoid having two operating systems on the same disk, I've purchased an identical HD (WD800BB) where FreeBSD will live on. Since I don't download movies or obscene amounts of MP3s, this is all a bit spacey. The XP disk only uses 35 of 80GB and I doubt the FreeBSD one will even be this full. How times change. :) 4.8 or 5.1? Before answering, I have a question for the list: Am I correct in assuming that there is no Security branch or Stable branch for cvsup'ing 5.1? If the answer to the question above is yes (no Security/Stable branches), I would stick with 4.8 and cvsup to Stable unless you need hardware support that only exists in 5.1. (Do you need support for USB 2?) My personal server happily runs 4.8R and will be updated to 4.9 when -stable becomes a bit more stable. It consists of older hardware and I don't plan to upgrade it to 5.x any time soon, if ever. But what do you recommend for the workstation? It doesn't have dual-processors and all of its hardware seems to be supported by 4.x. This machine, though, will eventually get 5.x. I'm wondering if it makes sense to put 4.8 on it now or if it would be a better choice to just go with 5.1R. My primary concern here is ease of upgrading. Will it be difficult to go from 4.9 to 5.2, somewhere down the road? Mergemaster is a rather scary looking critter. Differently put, will there be tools provided to allow this without too much fiddling? Partitions If anything brings out the perfectionist in me, it is figuring out how to partition a disk. What I have in mind for the 80GB FreeBSD disk for the workstation is this: / = 512MB (too spacey, but that should be plenty for future releases) swap = 3GB (see notes below) /var = 1GB (probably too much, but the room's there) /tmp = 1GB (256MB would probably be enough, but why not?) /usr = the rest (essentially 74GB) The machine currently has 512MB of RAM, but since I won't have the financial means or desire to get a new complete system in the next two to four years, it's possible that I'll upgrade the memory first to 1GB and later to 1.5GB if needed or wanted. 3GB would then be an acceptable amount of swap space, but I certainly won't need this much right now, and I might never. Am I overdoing it, or doesn't it really matter since I don't seem to lack storage room anyway? Then there's this huge /usr partition. 74GB. I thought about splitting this between /home and /usr, but I have honestly no idea (and experience) how much space I'll end up using where. It probably wouldn't matter since I won't need more 30 or 40GB of that space. There's also the possibility that I might end up using the second disk (another 80GB one that currently belongs to XP) for FreeBSD also. That would then be for /home, if for some unexpected reason I should need more space. In other words, I would like to keep this option open. This workstation won't hold critical data, so I do not plan on backing up entire partitions. If all of this is inefficient and I'm missing the obvious, please let me know. Keep in mind that I -am- new to the FreeBSD and Unix world. I'm open for suggestions here. Miscellaneous - FreeBSD will be on the second disk. Is Sysinstall, if FreeBSD is installed on the slave, going to ask if I'd like to put the BootMgr on the first drive? - In case I decide to make the second disk (with FreeBSD) the master drive some time in the not-so-near future, will it be fairly simple to accomplish this? Only jumper rearrangement, MBR and fstab editing? No, it's not quite that easy. When you install the additional hard drive, run /stand/sysinstall. Select the Index option and run the Partition option followed by the Label option. You used these programs when you installed FreeBSD. Since you've obviously survived installation, you have no need to worry about this now. - Anything else I need to pay particular attention to? Besides backing up important files on the XP disk in case something goes wrong. Thanks! Cheers, Michael Best of luck, Andrew Gould ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Planning a FreeBSD desktop, basic questions.
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003 17:01:41 +0200, Michael Vondung [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Hello! My apologies for the length of this post. Summary: 4.x or 5.x for a desktop machine, disk partitioning for a workstation, miscellaneous installation questions. Replying to selected bits - [snip] 4.8 or 5.1? My personal server happily runs 4.8R and will be updated to 4.9 when -stable becomes a bit more stable. It consists of older hardware and I don't plan to upgrade it to 5.x any time soon, if ever. But what do you recommend for the workstation? It doesn't have dual-processors and all of its hardware seems to be supported by 4.x. This machine, though, will eventually get 5.x. I'm wondering if it makes sense to put 4.8 on it now or if it would be a better choice to just go with 5.1R. My primary concern here is ease of upgrading. Will it be difficult to go from 4.9 to 5.2, somewhere down the road? Mergemaster is a rather scary looking critter. Differently put, will there be tools provided to allow this without too much fiddling? 4.8 now, 5.x via fresh install rather than upgrade when you feel comfortable. Re applications: Do you have a lot of applications installed, or some fairly large ones? How fast is your Internet connection? Depending on the answers, choose whether you want to prepare for 5.x by using portupgrade to make packages of applications (then saving them to the XP drive or burning them to CD), or by reinstalling the applications over the Internet onto the new 5.x system. Re system configuration: Do you have a lot of customized system config files? If not, doing it over again on a fresh installation of 5.x shouldn't take long. Unless you are thoroughly familiar with exactly what has changed between 4.x and 5.x, that should be easier than trying to pull your configuration through an upgrade. Keep in mind that I -am- new to the FreeBSD and Unix world. Yeah, definitely 4.8. :) Miscellaneous - FreeBSD will be on the second disk. Is Sysinstall, if FreeBSD is installed on the slave, going to ask if I'd like to put the BootMgr on the first drive? Yes. You must put the FreeBSD boot manager on *each* drive you want to boot with it, so if you would like the FreeBSD boot manager to offer you a choice between the XP drive (it'll call this ??? - see the FAQ) and the FreeBSD drive, install the boot manager on *both*. There is no requirement to use FreeBSD's boot manager, though. Grub from the ports works nicely (read the online documentation *carefully* first), or GAG is a very nice, free, just about automagic bootloader. You can also use the Windows bootloader - sorry to say I'm familiar with using it to boot Windows and FreeBSD from the *same* drive, but not two different drives. (You are welcome to read the FAQ or online Handbook on this subject. The last I did so, its description of the method for using the Windows bootloader for Windows and FreeBSD on separate drives was sufficiently unclear to me that I didn't want to try it.) Short version of the above - use GAG. :) - In case I decide to make the second disk (with FreeBSD) the master drive some time in the not-so-near future, will it be fairly simple to accomplish this? Only jumper rearrangement, MBR and fstab editing? *Only* MBR editing? And I'm giving *you* advice? Actually, I can't see that MBR editing would be necessary with FreeBSD (someone correct me if I'm wrong here). Fstab editing would be necessary, yes. XP may be unhappy on the second BIOS drive unless you are using a bootloader that will take care of this pretty automagically, like GAG, or reconfigure Grub to take care of it (see the Grub documentation re the 'map' command). - Anything else I need to pay particular attention to? Besides backing up important files on the XP disk in case something goes wrong. If you have a CD burner (you mentioned a CDR and a CD/DVD player, so I'm not sure), you should consider backing up to something that has no chance of getting fried by the same mishap that takes out your FreeBSD disk. Jud ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Planning a FreeBSD desktop, basic questions.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- ~ On 05-Sep-2003, Michael Vondung wrote message Planning a FreeBSD desktop, basic questions. ~ 4.8 or 5.1? I have 4.8 at work, and 5 at home. I'm happier with 4.8 so far. I keep running into silly quirks that I have to take time to fix in 5, library issues, that sort of thing. Basically I find myself wanting to reinstall with 4.8 on it. Partitions I run a similar machine at work. p4 2.4Ghz 512MB, 80GB. and it runs great. I gave myself 1GB of swap, and I rarely ever touch more than 40-50MB when I'm really giving it a beating. /= 512MB, I'm current at 31% utilized /var = 256MB, 38% utilized /tmp = 256MB, 14% utilized /usr = the rest... The machine currently has 512MB of RAM, but since I won't have the financial means or desire to get a new complete system in the next two to four years, I haven't seen much need to upgrade my RAM, though I don't run the K nor GNOME. ~~ Andy Harrison (full headers for details) -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQCVAwUBP1i47VPEkLgodAWVAQF3IgP/QNdaZhI6/buO1WaMJqBm0wkfByG1NqkC ELne8AiotgHAQ+RA8yM5tnktigqps2jXw/gyZm7MDiwPQI49xoFx2rEot1Ex1Ecm 4g6Wv1EaBzG10VqLU55IItm4t7FkllyJ3fT2F+2rx1RENd9wOm5uGAfeLw7ZHPYx +DwLWpfTbLA= =ULr1 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Planning a FreeBSD desktop, basic questions.
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Michael Vondung wrote: Partitions If anything brings out the perfectionist in me, it is figuring out how to partition a disk. What I have in mind for the 80GB FreeBSD disk for the workstation is this: / = 512MB (too spacey, but that should be plenty for future releases) Actually, on large disks I give / 1G. Why? Because, in the unlikely event that Something Bad happens, that would be plenty of room to hold a FreeBSD ISO image, or some other ISO image for some kind of recovery tool. swap = 3GB (see notes below) This strikes even me as too much. It's not like Windows, where it'll use swap even if it doesn't need it. Double your RAM is probably more than enough. -Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Planning a FreeBSD desktop, basic questions.
Michael Vondung wrote: Hello! Howdy, Michael. My apologies for the length of this post. Summary: 4.x or 5.x for a desktop machine, disk partitioning for a workstation, miscellaneous installation questions. Okay, the details! Now that I have my local FreeBSD server (mail/news, router, firewall) successfully running, I'm ready to tackle my workstation. This is currently a system with a P4-2.6Ghz, 512MB RAM, an 80GB EIDE disk, and the usual devices (CDR, CD/DVD player, network adapter and so on). At this time it is running Windows XP, and I plan to keep it where it is. To avoid having two operating systems on the same disk, I've purchased an identical HD (WD800BB) where FreeBSD will live on. Since I don't download movies or obscene amounts of MP3s, this is all a bit spacey. The XP disk only uses 35 of 80GB and I doubt the FreeBSD one will even be this full. How times change. :) Indeed. I'm only 21, and I still remember messing with a diskless Tandy 10 years ago when I was just getting started. Now I have a laptop with a 48G harddisk dual-booting WXP and FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE, and I still have more space than I know what to do with. It's a wonderful feeling! 4.8 or 5.1? See below. My personal server happily runs 4.8R and will be updated to 4.9 when -stable becomes a bit more stable. It consists of older hardware and I don't plan to upgrade it to 5.x any time soon, if ever. But what do you recommend for the workstation? It doesn't have dual-processors and all of its hardware seems to be supported by 4.x. This machine, though, will eventually get 5.x. I'm wondering if it makes sense to put 4.8 on it now or if it would be a better choice to just go with 5.1R. My primary concern here is ease of upgrading. Will it be difficult to go from 4.9 to 5.2, somewhere down the road? Well, considering that you have the necessary backup media (dvd-r, a bunch of cd-rw, a third hd, or tape), it shouldn't be THAT bad. However, it WILL be more difficult than upgrading from 4.7-RELEASE to 4.8-RELEASE. You generally will want to reformat the drive, or at least wipe out the file system. I personally run 5.1-RELEASE on my IBM Thinkpad A30p. I do so not because I like 5.x better than 4.x, but simply because I couldn't get advanced power management (APM) working under 4.8-RELEASE. I tried to install 4.8 first because I was more familiar with it at the time. 5.x is the future. In that respect, it isn't a bad idea to get used to it now, rather than later, when you suddenly find out that you HAVE to install it for some shiny new piece of hardware or software. Having said the above, I'll say this: 4.8-RELEASE _IS_ more stable than 5.x. I run 4.8-RELEASE on my servers. I run 5.1-RELEASE on my laptop. I can vouch for both version's stability. 5.1-RELEASE is _NOT_ unbearable, but it is also not quite as stable as 4.8-RELEASE. I won't put 5.x on my servers until 5.3 or 5.4, I think, unless KSE support is just super killer stable in 5.2. :) Also, you might have more trouble actually getting FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE installed on newer machines. You sometimes have to set boot variables to keep the kernel from crashing/panicing. In conclusion, 5.1-RELEASE is good enough for a desktop, IMO, but you'd better be prepared for an installation/learning curve over 4.8-RELEASE. On the flip side, you're probably going to have to face that learning curve at some point in the future anyway, so you might as well dive in on your conditions and your timeframe, rather than wait until it's a requirement. HTH Sincerely, -- Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator WingNET Internet Services, P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605 423-559-LINK (v) 423-559-5145 (f) http://www.wingnet.net ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
