freebsd installation order

[andrew clarke]

On Wed 2008-10-29 13:43:23 UTC+0000, pwn (pwnedomina at gmail.com) wrote:

> immediately after the installation of FreeBSD what steps should be  
> performed by order
> 1 - Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel
> 2 - The Cutting Edge
> 3 - Updating FreeBSD
>
> Is this the proper order?
> there is some set of rules to be followed post-installation?
> since, i do not find any reference mentioning the order that should be  
> followed immediately after installation i would like to be informed if  
> possible what will be the proper order to facilitate the maintenance of  
> the operating system and the installation of new applications without  
> conflicts or problems with ports.

Re: Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel.  Depending on your hardware and
software requirements you may need to configure the supplied GENERIC
kernel, or perhaps even build your own custom kernel and configure
that.  These days I think many people just use the GENERIC kernel and
configure it from /boot/loader.conf.  For a desktop machine it may
just be a single entry to load a kernel module for your sound card.

If you do use a GENERIC kernel this has the advantage that you can run
freebsd-update whenever there are important security updates to the
kernel itself, and then those updates become immediately active after
a reboot.  There is no need to rebuild the kernel, and very little
downtime.

Re: The Cutting Edge.  In simple terms I would not bother with any of
this unless you want to be actively involved in the development of the
operating system.  If you just want something that works reliably,
stick with FreeBSD-RELEASE and use freebsd-update when you want to
upgrade your FreeBSD version (eg. from 6.3 to 6.4).  freebsd-update is
brilliant and really makes updating fairly painless.  Which leads me
to...

Re: Updating FreeBSD.  Every FreeBSD sysadmin should read this.  You
should know how to install packages from the command-line using
pkg_add (see the section called Installing Applications: Packages and
Ports), and if you want to use the Ports system, learn how to use
portsnap (another brilliant tool).

Also, if you're using the Ports system (to build and install software
from source code) I also recommend using portmaster, which isn't
talked about in the Handbook, but is leaps and bounds over portupgrade
(my personal opinion).

> thank you.

Regards
Andrew