Installing FreeBSD 4.5 (was: I'm confused...)

[Charlie Sorsby]

First, thank you for taking time out of your weekend to respond to
my query.  It's much appreciates.

I apologize for taking so long to reply.  As you can imagine, my
system has been up and down and e-mail with it.

> On Saturday, 11 December 2004 at 16:26:07 -0700, Charlie Sorsby wrote:
> > Is the installer for freeBSD 4.5 broken?
> >
> > I've long procrastinated updating to a more recent version of
> > freeBSD, mainly because I hate trying to get things back the way I
> > had them afterwards.
> >
> > Consequently, I've been running 3.4 for quite a long while.  Today,
> > I finally decided to bite the bullet and update to 4.5, the most
> > recent CD that I have.
>
> That's ancient, nearly three years old.  I'm almost tempted to say
> "after two years the installer stops working".  But in any case, you
> really shouldn't be installing such old software.

Well, I finally got it go go through all of install -- what that
means is still uncertain.  But, for once, I took pretty thorough
notes -- it's a shame that there's no way to log all of the
intallation process. :(  Yes, I understand why.

On the last pass, it hung during installation of the packages that
I'd selected on the cvsupit package.  The last thing it said was
"Package cvsupit-3.0 read successfully -- waiting for pkg_add(1)"
...

I'd gone to bed -- it was the wee hours by then -- and
when I checked in the morning I found (using <CTL><ALT><F2>)
that there was a page there titled "Branch selection menu" but it
was unresponsive.  Don't know why that went to the F2 console
rather than the normal without so much as a "See ... with F2 ..."
message.

Anyways, using <CTL><ALT><F1>, I returned to the main screen and,
grasping at straws, entered <CTL><C> which took me to an
"Installation interrupt" box with choices to abort, restart, and
continue.  Decided to see what would happen if I selected
"Continue."  That took me to a message box: "Add of package
cvsupit-3.0 aborted, error code 1 -- Please check the debug screen
for more info."  There it simply said in a box "Aborting cvsup stup
per user request."

Returning to the main screen (F1), where, as I recall, the only
choice was "[OK]", I entered <RETURN> -- Oops! on "modern"
keyboards, it's <ENTER>... -- and it resumed reading and adding
packages.  Anyways, it finally finished the rest of those and I
went through the various other things (add user, set root password,
etc.)  After that, a "User Confirmation Menu" asked if I wanted to
visit the "general configuration menu" to set any last options.
"[NO" was highlighted so I just accepted that default. 

That took me back to the "/stand/sysinstall Main Menu" (which I
thought is what would have happened if I'd answered "[YES]" but
what do I know.  Since I was there anyway I selected "Do post-
install configuration" and tried (unsuccessfully as far as I could
tell) to configure X.  After that, I thought to hell with it and
decided to go quail hunting after all since it was only 09:30 and
the spot I was considering is only an hour and a half away.

Well, the list(s) of Fn keys presented by the boot manager has, not
unexpectedly, changed and I apparently selected the wrong one but I
did manage to guess right a the "boot:" prompt and managed to get
back to booting the disk that contains 3.4 and it still works.
At least I'd have a working system while I was away...

Well, when I got back and started experimenting again, I got it to
boot to what purported to be freeBSD 4.5 -- but by this time I'm
pretty burnt out and didn't even think to take notes so this is
from memory.

While it claimed to have booted to 4.5, the partitions that were
mounted were those containing 3.4 and those on which I still have
the stuff from 2.1.5.  Put another way, while it claimed to have
booted 4.5 it *looked* as though it had booted 3.4.  I have *NO*
idea what was going on.  I've tried a couple of times, back and
forth but, as I said, failed to take notes.  Since 3.4 is still
running (more or less normally as far as I can tell), I probably
won't get to any more experimentation until this evening or
tomorrow.  I'll try to take more notes then but I may have
changed a few things by manually mounting the 4.5 partitions and
looking round.

Here's /etc/fstab from the 4.5 root partition (this is apparently
just as sysinstall created it -- I'm just now removing the extra
tab that cause excessive line length and ugly random wraps from the
following copy):

# See the fstab(5) manual page for important information on automatic mounts
# of network filesystems before modifying this file.
#
# Device	Mountpoint	FStype	Options		Dump	Pass#
/dev/da0s1b	none		swap	sw		0	0
/dev/da0s2b	none		swap	sw		0	0
/dev/da1s1b	none		swap	sw		0	0
/dev/da2s1b	none		swap	sw		0	0
/dev/da3s1b	none		swap	sw		0	0
/dev/da3s1a	/		ufs	rw		1	1
/dev/da2s1e	/home		ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da1s1g	/old.home	ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da0s2a	/root.215	ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da1s1a	/root.34	ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da3s1h	/spare		ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da3s1e	/usr		ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da0s2f	/usr.215	ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da1s1e	/usr.34		ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da0s2g	/usr.local.215	ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da1s1h	/usr.local.34	ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da3s1g	/usr/local	ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da3s1f	/var		ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da0s2e	/var.215	ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da1s1f	/var.34		ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/da1s1d	/var/spool/news	ufs	rw		2	2
/dev/cd0c	/cdrom		cd9660	ro,noauto	0	0
proc		/proc		procfs	rw		0	0

The various mount points should be pretty much self explanatory.

> Don't you have the facility to download a more recent ISO?

Well, my original intent was to install 4.5 from the CDROM that I
have and then, once that was working, to update from the net to a
more recent version.

Frankly, however, at this point I'm not sure how recent I shall go
or whether I'll ever update beyond 4.x, not because of the problems
with this installation -- it's quite possible that I managed to do
something wrong somewhere along the lines, I Have been known to.

Rather, the reason is that freeBSD is diverging more and more from
BSD.  I realize that that's in the good old Berkeley tradition but
at least CSRG had the decency to call their version of Unix something
other than Seventh Edition Unix or 32V and not pretend that it was
still the same thing.

There's also the fact that the freeBSD developers apparently have
a very low opinion of the intelligence of their customers (for lack
of a better term).

First, instead of simply advising people that tcsh is recommended
over csh, they chose to rename tcsh to csh and delete csh entirely
(although I have been told that the real csh still exists in the
ports collection).  The fact of the developers preferring tcsh is
not the problem; it is that they give the impression that they
believe that those using their OS haven't the intelligence to decide
for themselves what shell to use.

Now, I find that the only thing in /usr/games is an empty
subdirectory, /usr/games/hide; the contents of /usr/games has been
a tradition of BSD since my very first Unix account -- and quite
possibly of Seventh Edition Unix as well.  Perhaps it is thought
that those who would install freeBSD are too stupid to either make
/usr/games inaccessible to users or even to remove it's contents if
that's what *THEY*, the system's administrator, so wishes.  Please
don't say that it's because "There's *SO* much to put on the CD..."
/usr/games on my 3.4 system consumes all of 1.337MB; as I scrolled
through the packages collection Saturday night, I saw many much
larger packages that are just as much fluff as /usr/games.  The
problem is, I think, a lack of a sense of tradition.

Those are only two examples; I'll be very surprised if there is not
a long list of things that the developers think they know better
than their customers what those customers should use.

I know it sounds as though I don't appreciate the work that the
developers are doing.  That is not so.  I also realize that, since
they are volunteers, they can do as they damned well please.  Nor
am I opposed to improving freeBSD; what I'm opposed to is changing
its character.  I never bought a PC until after FreeBSD--then still
actually BSD--became available.  I'd been spoilt at work by having
access to real computers with real operating systems.  When I'd
experienced PCs at work, I found that DOS simply couldn't do what I
wanted to do.  Later when I tried Windows, I found that the contant
reliance on the point-and-click paradigm was constantly getting in
my way.  FreeBSD made PCs useful to me.

But I'm just one user and not a very important user at that.  I'm
sure that freeBSD will continue to evolve into something that I
don't care to use.  (You'll have noticed the capitalization and
lack of it when I've typed [Ff]reeBSD.  It's intentional.)

> Greg
> --
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Well, again, I thank you for your response.  I'll try to take decent
notes when I again try rebooting to 4.5 although that sure slows
the process of installing and, now, debugging an installation.  I
don't write very fast...

Kindest regards,

Charlie
--  
Charlie Sorsby
        crs at swcp.com
        P. O. Box 1225
        Edgewood, NM 87015
        USA

PS Which edition of your book is the one relevant to freeBSD 4.x?