FreeBSD beginner (NetBSD advanced)

[epilogue]

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 20:30:10 +0200 (CEST)
Wojciech Puchar <wojtek at tensor.3miasto.net> wrote:

> i want to go to FreeBSD instead of NetBSD on my i386 machines because of 
> all "new features" :( introduced in NetBSD after 1.5 mostly crashing
> softdeps, strange memory/unified disk cache management (large writing to 
> file almost freezes everything) etc. etc.
> 
> i installed FreeBSD once to do quick performance tests, and at least in 
> disk I/O and fair scheduling it's MUCH better (tested 4.10 and 5.1).
> 
> my questions:
> 
> 1) what is Buf and Cache in top exactly? why buf on 96MB machine gets to 
> near 20MB and never goes down? it's almost 1/4 of memory size.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html  (point #2)

> 2) can i compile kernel with -march=pentium,pentium[234] -O2
> optimization? in NetBSD 2.0 doing -march=pentium produces kernel that
> doesn't boot at all, just resets.

the following appears in /etc/make.conf:
"CFLAGS controls the compiler settings used when compiling C code. Note
that optimization settings above -O (-O2, ...) are not recommended or
supported for compiling the world or the kernel"

i'm working with 4.10 and have the following line in my /etc/make.conf
CPUTYPE=i686

are either of these were what you were looking for?

> 3) how can i disable compiling, using etc.. all that LKM (KLD) stuff?
> 
> i really prefer one static kernel.
>
> 4) is IPv6 working well? (i mean no crashes etc...) i will get real IPv6 
> zone allocation soon and want to use it.
> 
> 5) what is used in FreeBSD for traffic management. NetBSD has altq - 
> please just give me a name i will RTFM.
> 
> 6) how to turn using serial port as console on i386? my home machine is 
> headless, i'm using X terminals to access it.

is this what you're looking for?
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/serialconsole-setup.html

if you've got firewire, you may also want to look at man dcons.

> 7) does FreeBSD support 2 CPUs on i386?

yes, though i have no experience with it.

you may care to peruse the handbook
(see link above)

or check the freebsd-questions mailing list archives
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/

or google

> sorry if too much questions at once, i would like to move my home machine
> to FreeBSD tomorrow, test it at real for a month and then (if it will be 
> better than NetBSD for my needs) replace other machines.
> 
> should i go to 4.10 or better 5.2.1? stability is really important to me.

i would recommend 4.10.  though the 5.x series is solid, it is undergoing
heavy development.  5.x won't be releasing a 'stable' version until
sometime later this year.

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