Rebuilding World Problems

[Gavin Spomer]

>>> "Chris H." <chris#@1command.com> 02/13/08 1:25 PM >>>
> > Surprisingly I grokked most of your cheatsheet and looked at a few 
> > man pages to figure out most of the rest. Haven't tried it all yet. I 
> > was wondering about the "mount -u /". Is it really necessary to mount 
> > the root partition prior to mounting all of them in the next step?
> 
> Absolutely. Think about it for a momment. Given that EVERYTHING
> (save swap) is mounted off of root ( / ). So it becomes quite
> impossible to mount /usr/ if / hasn't already been mounted. In
> other words; if / hasn't been mounted it doesn't exist for usr/
> to mount from it. :)

For some reason I was thinking that they were still separate, regardless of their hierarchical relationship. Well, might as well just do them both since it doesn't hurt. After all, what's a few keystrokes?

> >
> > I don't really understand the "swapon -a". When is it necessary and 
> > when is it not?
> 
> As a rule, it is already available after boot. So executing swapon -a
> is often considered overkill. /But/ absolutely no harm will come of
> doing it, and it /may/ be necessary. So this just insures you have
> an "event free" journey. :)
> 
> >
> > Also, UPDATING has "adjkerntz -i" just before "mergemaster -p". I 
> > looked at the man page for adjkerntz and am still uncertain if I need 
> > to do this. I run an ntpd client, if that makes any difference.
> 
> Again, just a precaution. Think "safe", or "event free". :)


Yeah, I like to think I balance a fearless attitude with caution quite well. Being fearless allows one to make mistakes and thus potentially learn more than if not making them, but when it's obvious that safety can save you a lot of grief, that is the path to take in that instance.

> >
> > I think the documentation is an excellent reference for people who 
> > already, moderately know FreeBSD. I am not even a true newbie as I 
> > have a CS degree and have been a Linux admin for 2 years. Even so I 
> > often have a hard time with the complexity of FreeBSD. I recognize 
> > the value of understanding the fine-grain "nuts and bolts" of a 
> > system, but even so I wonder if FreeBSD over-complicates some things?
> 
> This is the "UNIX way". It breaks everything into small bits of
> useful stuff. There-by providing the "nuts & bolts" to build, or
> accomplish almost /anything/ with little, or no effort. Linux kind
> of "missed the boat" on this one. But even Linus T. indicates that
> Linux is not UNIX. I'd have to say, it's more a "feels like UNIX"
> than anything else.

I agree with the "accomplish almost/anything" fully, but from *my* experience I respectfully, but strongly disagree with the "with little, or no effort" part. But that is likely because I don't know Unix even a tenth as well as you do. :D I guess it's just particularly hard for me in this case to see benefit; it takes only one command and a lot less time to patch my SuSE systems, for example. But again, it all boils down to perspective, I guess. Make sense?

> to a new user. One must remember, after all, that it is a /server/
> and perhaps, not best suited to an average "desktop" user. But, if
> given the time, will become your best friend - /really/. :)

I never run any GUI on my servers.

> Best wishes to you.
> 
> --Chris H.

Thanks, I am genuinely having a LOT of fun dinking around with FreeBSD on my test server! Linux was definitely a good warm up. And it's nice to be able to tinker under the hood on all my Mac's. (Have 2 @ work and 1 @ home)