I need Help Please.

[Vulpes Velox]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 02:15:28 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
"darkstarmaster21" <darkstarmaster21 at verizon.net> wrote:

> Hello My name is Ron. I'm a newbie to FreeBSD. I downloaded a copy to my
> machine and created a iso. Burned it and installed the system with not much
> trouble. The problem is I have a old Gateway  G6-266m with 128mb ram , a
> CDrom, & burner and 2 Drives One has XP Pro on it and is switchable by the
> bios on which can boot up first.   I installed version 5.1 FreeBSD which
> took 3 cd's to be burned, what I cant understand is it never asks for more
> than one cd. I never even looked at the other two. cause I can't get my
> display to work. I tried xf86Config and other I found in the /usr/X11R6/bin
> folder but nothing works right. 

To get a working XF86Config use XFree86 -configure. Then move that file to
/etc/X11/XF86Config  Then to config the file use xf86cfg -textmode to configure
it.

Note: on some systems you may  have to go in and comment out the dri line on
some gfx cards.
 
> I have a RIVA 128 card in here with 4 mb ram and it always crashes and never
> starts. I switched to a generic vga card and it started but it was 640 x 
> 280 way too big to use and see. I'm stuck. I cant remember the commands and
> I'm unable to use midnight commander for which I'm used to when looking thru
> directory.I truly want to master this system and become a help to others
> when I'm better, but I'm afraid I don't know enough.  I looked for a listing
> of commands and all i see is stuff I don't quite understand. I'm trying to
> get away from windows completely so I can be a champion for linux/ unix but
> I cant even demonstrate what I can do with it with the limited knowledge I
> have. I tried the commands I know in linux but this is pure unix which is a
> lot better and more secure and a lot harder.   Please help me and I will be
> glad to bring other to the fold and teach them someday.

Uhm, having a error message to go by would be really useful. Hmm, if this is
your first time trying stuff like this, don't worry about it, some of the finer
parts of unix take awhile to learn.

Here are some good starting places...
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html
http://www.freebsd.org/projects/newbies.html
http://wks.uts.ohio-state.edu/unix_course/unix.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/index.html
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi


Generally the best way to get help on a specific command is to use man... do a
mam man to find more out about the man program.

> I can be reached at home at 215-324-1605 or by e-mail.   I know you guy's
> can get me up to speed but I plan to give back someday. So teach me well and
> I can help carry the burden someday.
>
> I have DSL as well and I wanted to connect my FreeBSD to my  other PC thru a
> crossover cable to my second NIC ( win2000 machine- has DSL on 1st Nic card)
>  can you tell me what I need to do to connect and will this be networked
> finally. I have been trying for 2 weeks and I'm at the point I want to give
> up cause I'm not able to  ping the w2k box from my bsd box at all. I think
> this is enough for now. I'm confident that I'm in the right place for help
> now.   

Lets make this part simple... use the freebsd box for nat and not the win2k
machine. Check out the nat page in the
handbook(http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-natd
.html and if you have not done so, read the rest of the handbook. Just put on of
the nics in the bsd box on dhcp for the dsl adapter and the other to something
like 192.168.0.1. Now plug your win2k machine into the second one and give it
something like 192.168.0.2 and tell it to use 192.168.0.1 as the gateway.

Hope this has been of help. If you have any other questions feel free to ask :)