Why BSD?

[Jesse Guardiani]

Jason M. Leonard wrote:

> 
> On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, Jesse Guardiani wrote:
> 
>> Jeff Elkins wrote:
>>
>> > This is not a troll.
>> >
>> > I've installed FreeBSD 5.2 on a spare SCSI drive and am compiling
>> > kernels, updating ports, etc,etc. Thus far, other than some minor
>> > hassles, it's equivilent to my Debian sid.
>> >
>> > I have to ask: Why FreeBSD rather than Linux?
>> >
>> > Honest question.
>>
>> For me, this question has been answered twice in different attempts to
>> "give linux a try". I'm a Sys Admin, and we run FreeBSD almost
>> exclusively at work. However, every new employee we hire walks into the
>> building with an attitude that Linux is somehow better than FreeBSD
>> because they're heard so much about it and haven't heard anything about
>> FreeBSD. So, on two separate occasions, I decided to "give linux a try".
>> Both ended miserably:
>>
> *snip*
>>
>> Occasion 2.) Got sick of Win 98 SE on my wife's computer, so I decided to
>> "give
>>              Linux a second chance".
>>
>>  This time I WANTED to go with Red Hat, since it's arguably the most
>>  popular Linux distro. However, one look at their new licensing made me
>>  change my mind in favor of Gentoo - The most BSD-like Linux distro.
>>
>>  Maybe I was doing something wrong, but I couldn't find an automated
>>  install process. I had to read a text file and copy and paste install
>>  commands by HAND to get Gentoo installed. This was painful and tedious.
>>  It took probably 4 hours to install. Their motto is "freedom of choice"
>>  or something similar. Well where is my freedom to choose a quick
>>  install???
>>
>>  Pros: Very nice BSD-like portage system. Top notch.
>>
>>  Cons: Terrible install process. Took forever.
> 
> A couple of weeks ago I acquired a 4x50 slot Overland Neo tape library for
> the purpose of backing up several 1T volumes that live on FreeBSD file
> servers.  Unfortunately I could not find backup server software for
> FreeBSD that would allow me to back up volumes that span multiple tapes.

[...]

> Needless to say, I will be implementing a better--and no doubt
> Linuxless--backup solution as soon as possible.


Well, bacula will allow you to span multiple tapes. Be warned: Bacula+FreeBSD
is in it's infancy, and you'll need 4.9-RELEASE or 5.2-RELEASE or higher in
order to reliably use the multi-tape backup spanning functionality (a bug in
the pthreads implementation of earlier versions of FreeBSD would cause data
loss on the last 500k or so of tape). But this is what I'm currently
implementing at work. We require nearly 1T of backup space too, and I intend
to eek every last gig of space from my tapes.

Again, bacula+FreeBSD is in it's infancy. I'm currently working with Kern,
bacula's author, to get some issues worked out. And I have a few small patches
that would probably make your life easier. But I definately see bacula as being
a good backup solution for FreeBSD in the near future.

Bacula also allows you to back up to disk. 160G large capacity ATA hard disks
have a better cost/MB ratio than many tapes out there currently.

Something to think about...

http://www.bacula.org

-- 
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