FreeBSD for the common man(or woman) (was: > upgrade 7.2

Polytropon freebsd at edvax.de
Fri Aug 7 00:04:24 UTC 2009


On Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:09:51 +0300, Manolis Kiagias <sonicy at otenet.gr> wrote:
> Windows experience won't help much - mainly due to the fact Windows
> forces the users (and admins) to a completely different way of thinking
> than FreeBSD. 

That's true. It's even hard to communicate with "'Windows' admins"
because of a completey different and misleading terminology - and
sadly often the lack of understanding what they're talking about.



> The various wizards abstract way too many parts of the
> system, to the point where you can configure services you don't really
> understand (i.e. a DNS server is a few clicks away and there are many
> 'recommended' defaults along the way). 

Insecure mode: This is the mode you want. Select it NOW! :-)



> This is mostly not possible in
> FreeBSD. You do need some level of understanding before making a
> particular feature to work, though you are not expected to be an expert
> on the subject. The level of course varies with the feature (sendmail is
> orders of magnitude more difficult than NFS).

Yes. As I said (elsewhere), FreeBSD is a multi-purpose OS. It does
not know what you are intending to use it for, and it doesn't make
any assumptions. So you have to communicate your requirements to the
system. This requires a certain knowledge, of course.



> Linux experience will definitely help.

As long as your Linux experience includes basic UNIX (quite generic)
knowledge. If you're only familiar with clicking in a pre-installed
KDE, it's not much better than "Windows".



> For DVD burning (from the command line, I assume) use the
> sysutils/dvd+rw-tools port. If using an atapi burner, load the atapicam
> driver at startup by adding atapicam_load="YES" to /boot/loader.conf.

I forgot to mention this. You are correct of course.



> This will create a /dev/cd0 from your /dev/acd0 device (it emulates a
> SCSI device). 

To conform with the growisofs manual, you could symlink it to /dev/dvd
using the setting

	link    acd0    cdrom

in /etc/devfs.conf. Check for permissions to the files that are needed
with burning commands - the ordinary user is usually not allowed to access
these files in the needed way (due to security considerations). For
example, you can put

	own     cd0     root:operator
	perm    cd0     0664
	own     xpt0    root:operator
	perm    xpt0    0660
	own     pass0   root:operator
	perm    pass0   0660

into the file mentioned above and add your user to the operator group
(using the pw command).

Once taken the time to set things up, they make you happy running for
a lifetime. :-)





-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...


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