FreeBSD installation and config experience

[Thomas Connolly]

Good Information Lars!  Thanks.

Thomas P. Connolly
Senior Development Engineer
Colorado Engineering Experiment Station Inc.
Phone: (970) 897-2711
Fax: (970) 897-2710
Email: tconnolly at ceesi.com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-newbies at freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-newbies at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Lars
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 4:35 AM
To: freebsd-newbies at freebsd.org
Subject: FreeBSD installation and config experience

Hi all,

I want to share some experiences I've had buying, reading about,
installing and configuring FreeBSD 4.7.

I am, not for much longer though, a W2k user.
I mainly use my home pc for games, dvd viewing and ripping and mp3 encoding
and listening.
So nothing serious on that side.

Three months ago I bought FBSD 4.7 from bsdmall.com and the book "Absolute
BSD"
in my local bookshop (which, fortunately enough, has a well selected
O'Reilly/UNIX section).

<general life and stuff>
2.5 months later
</general life and stuff>

Two weeks ago I bought a new HDD and after a lot of reading of the FreeBSD
handbook 
on freebsd.org, Absolute BSD and other sites and mailing lists I actually
installed FreeBSD 4.7.

My hardware:
P4 2.4 GHz
512 1066 RAM
3*120GB HDD Samsung 
NV GF4 Ti 4200
Hercules FortissimoII soundcard
Logitech MX300 optical mouse (USB)
3com 905TX NIC
EIZO L565 TFT monitor connected per DVI

System is behind a DSL router with dynamic domain name auto-update
functionality.

I began the installation with the "Standard with X software suite".
After the surprisingly fast installation, basic network configuration and
creation of a user,
I rebooted and the system started up nicely.

After unsuccessful DNS resolution and some subsequent reading I edited the
resolv.conf file and 
tested name resolution by using lynx -worked.

Following the foolproof instructions in Abolute BSD and the online docs 
I upgraded my system to 4.8.

Email:
Now that was a tricky one ;-)
1. configure mutt -3h;
2. configure sendmail -6h;
3. configure fetchmail -3h;
4. set my hostname to the my dynamic domain name => email works.

XFree86:
Several unsuccessful configuration attempts at getting a nice GUI.
Replaced the DVI cable with an analogue one -GUI works;
ask in forum why -"use Nvidia driver!";
download driver;
consult Absolute BSD and onlamp.com for multimedia kernel options
-compile new kernel -sound works ;-);
install nvidia driver and plugin DVI cable -X works per DVI too -nice.
consult google and freebsd.org;
install wrapper -$user can startx;
next tasks: 
-enable mp3 playback from kde or cli;
-enable DVD playback and ripping;
-setup additional PCs as fileservers and web presence;

Time spent configuring other stuff in FreeBSD, learning about UNIX, vi,
fetchmail, mutt,
sendmail, XFree and other more general stuff like SMTP and DNS,
approximately 20h.

Being something like a "poweruser", whatever that means, on my W2k system
and supporting w2k at work, I thought I had some clue about IT, protocols
and
other principles of networking. 
I was wrong.
In fact I learned a lot more in the 35h of mucking around on my machine
than in a few months of supporting w2k!

At times rather frustrating, setting up my little box has been an extremely 
rewarding experience. The community is very supportive and if you manage to
formulate
your question in a halfway informative and intelligent way the answers come
in quick.

I've still got a long way to go and am not allowed to be tempted by my nice
windowsmanager,
but I'm confident it's the right way to go.

So to all newbies out there: 
DO NOT GIVE UP!

RTFM and maybe buy a book on FreeBSD.

You'll learn a lot more about the information _technology_ using FreeBSD
than you'll ever do using a MS product.

Use "good" hardware (not some Winmodem or other cheapa.. crap);
use a dedicated HDD;
get a good book or two (e.g. Absolute BSD by Michael Lucas and UNIX Power
Tools from O'Reilly);
use the command line;
then use a windowmanager (windowSmanager?);
try using ONLY FreeBSD to force yourself to immerse yourself 
and make an effort configuring the system;
use RCS to track changes you made;
write down what you did in a notebook;
check freebsd.org, onlamp.com, bsdforums.com periodically
and try to emulate the examples, especially the BSD articles on onlamp.com.

Ok, that's it.
Thanks for your time.

Kind regards,
Lars.
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