Installation of FreeBSD 8.0-Current-2009-amd64-dvd

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

Dear All ,

A few days ago I have downloaded and installed 8.-Current-2009-05-amd64-dvd
on an
Intel DG965WHMKR main board with 2 GB RAM and 250 GB SATA II hard disk ,
PS/2 mouse and key board .

Installation has been completed successfully and the PC booted well .

(1)
I tried to use X but X was completely missing .

(2)
Trying to add X with pkg_add did not worked because it could not find it in
FreeBSD repositories .

(3)
I did not understand what can I do with that release sufficiently well ,
because I could not find
a ReadMe about What to Do with this snapshot ( Perhaps there is one within
installed OS but
there is no any reminder about it with respect to my knowledge ( I could not
check it now because
I have installed another OS on its hard disk . ) .

My ideas are following :

(i)
A ReadMe file set like supplied by releases would be very useful . Assume
that these
will be drafts of the release 8.0 . People will be able to work and make
comments on them .

A ReadMe about how to use and test the snapshot and supply feedback about
its usage
( I think general bug  reports are not very suitable for current
development  activities ) .

(ii)
Up to now I did not see any test program which can be applied by the
installers and then
send results back to FreeBSD release and current developers . Such a program
would test an overall
structure of the installed components and would sent a report to FreeBSD
current developers .

(iii)
Some Linux distributions are collecting computer profile data for successful
installations , for example ,
Fedora is collecting profile information and summaries are published in
www.smolts.org .

FreeBSD installations may include a similarly profile collection  step  .
I do not know the relationship between www.bsdstats.org and
www.freebsd.org, but a detailed
hardware profile list such as the following sample pages would be very
useful :

http://hcl.mandriva.com/
http://en.opensuse.org/Hardware
http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility_List
http://www.ubuntuhcl.org/
http://www.turbolinux.com/products/compatibility/index.html
https://hardware.redhat.com/
http://www.smolts.org/

http://www.armorlogic.com/openbsd_information_server_compatibility_list.html

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/
How to Certify hardware : http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/hcts/
Submit Hardware to the Solaris HCL :
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/submittal/submit.jsp

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hcl/default.mspx

Some others :
http://www.networkupstools.org/compat/stable.html ( UPS )

http://hcl.xensource.com/ ( Xen Server )
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/HardwareCompatibilityList


(iv)
A structured form in a page in FreeBSD web site to collect information about
failed installations
and their hardware profiles  ( because failed installation can not send any
profile mail ) .

(v)
Handbook is only showing last active releases , the others are replaced by
latest release related handbook .
For users it is no more possible to access removed handbooks .

It is possible to use a structure  like following :

...
Handbook 6.4
...
Handbook 7.0
Handbook 7.1
Handbook 7.2
...
Handbook 8.0

During current development phase it is possible also to get proposals about
current Handbook and it may be possible
to synchronize it with current OS . In that way , it becomes possible to (
NOT to revise release Handbook for the active releases ) .
Each Handbook develops in its own course .
Previous Handbooks will not be lost due to new releases .
Current Handbook will be initialized  by copying  a previous  Handbook  and
then will be modified with respect to developed current .


Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk