Install Tips for Newbie with FreeBSD 10

precutcolours at mailcan.com precutcolours at mailcan.com
Fri Jan 3 01:37:28 UTC 2014


I'd like tips for installing FreeBSD 10 on a PowerPC G5 + 2 GiB RAM.

The old OpenFirmware needs an Apple Partition Map to boot but will boot
over USB, which I've tested.

My plan is to carve the required Apple Partition Map on a 'minimalist'
USB flash stick, with pivot to the 'real' FreeBSD system on a hard disk.
That disk will use a GUID table and ZFS. It's external too (USB or
FireWire). There is no internal disk at all.

My notion is to rig the thumb drive just for (1) APM and (2) fast
bootup. Reads are fast...writes horrible. The min would be GRUB I guess?
But it could hold a kernel, and maybe more. What's best?

I may just need a good fstab, but I'm unacquainted with ZFS, and so open
to advice on it; /tmp will live in RAM; there will be no swap space.

I want to run a lot from RAM, with sync to disk at intervals or
shutdown. $HOME lives in RAM and syncs. It's only for dotfiles and
prefs. Big data (vids/pics/docs/etc) live elsewhere. Putting $HOME in
RAM is odd but speeds a system and saves the day in power crashes.

I'd like nightly auto upgrades if possible. Can v10's new packaging
system do them? Does FreeBSD have an app for that?

Thanks for any tips you can lend.

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