Computers

Most of what is posted here can be found in the FreeBSD Documentation, and via google. This is more for my use than anything else.

Nice to have a server. Better would be able to connect it to the network.

My aging UPS has been replaced with a APC Back-UPS. Nothing special to making the package.

Moving from Linux one needs to pay special attention to where the config files are located.

I'm a big fan of fwbuilder. It does all I need it to do. One gotcha with FreeBSD is you need to add kldload ipl to your /boot/loader.conf file. It also seems to be sensitive to the Directions in the policy. Having the direction set to both generates the error" warning: Changing rule direction due to self reference" Also make sure the firewall can send packets out.

-JJ

Since 9.1 was out I decided to give it a go.

I installed PC-BSD. I like the fact that it lays out my hard disks and gets me going with a desktop. Downside, I was not able to get my head wrapped around AppCafe, PBI and how they work with ports and packages.

PC-BSD has an option where it will setup a FreeBSD server. Free advice: when they say "installs a basic, vanilla installation of FreeBSD" they mean just that. Which for me works perfect. The fact that it will set up a ZFS drive is a bonus. Due to a server breach and the ongoing investigation there are no packages available from the FreeBSD servers. Building from ports really is not *ALL* that bad. Especially Xfce.

-JJ

Ditches Smoking gun!

My UPS had been giving me a battery warning for several months. It quit warning me. So did my computers. I came into a dark, silent and cold room.

UPS was bypassed and everything booted. Slackware started to give me weird errors and the final straw was a loss of several 100 emails. I went through all the recovery processes, and found I lost my work Virtual Machine. Several profanities were expelled. My backup is a couple of months old. I was able to get my data off the VM. I lost a couple of weeks worth of emails. The several hundred missing were found, just not by my mail client.

I don't recommend is ignoring that little "Replace Battery" LED.

-JJ

Are we getting dizzy?

Ran into some dependency problems with CentOS. Back to Slackware.

Update 11/01/2012: It took, running Slackware.

-JJ