SRA840 Lab1

SRA840 Lab1

REFERENCES

FreeBSD Handbook

FreeBSD Committer's Guide

Answers

Kezhong Liang

Differences between FreeBSD and Fedora installation
1. FreeBSD must be installed into a primary partition and doesn't support the operation to the logical partition.
2. FreeBSD uses the concept of Slice and Fedora uses partition.
3. FreeBSD uses one of the slice of a disk as SWAP and Fedora uses individual partition as SWAP. 
4. FreeBSD supports UFS file system and Fedora supports EXT2, EXT3, and so on.
5. FreeBSD uses text-based sysinstall utility to install OS and Fedora uses graphic mode.
6. FreeBSD uses tcsh as default shell and Fedora uses bash.
7. GUI may not be installed on FreeBSD.
Pros of FreeBSD installation process 
1. The default installation is basic operating system and occupies small size of disk.
Cons of FreeBSD installation process 
1. Users who want to install need to configure more than Fedora.
Differences in disk drives labeling and supported file systems 
FreeBSD:
  ad0 represents a disk.
  support UFS file system
Linux:
  /dev/sda represents a disk.
  support EXT2, EXT3, and so on.
Files in the /etc directory (what each of them do) 
In my machine, there are 79 files in the /etc directory. 
  /etc/fstab       --contains file systems
  /etc/ftpusers    --list of users disallowed any ftp access
  /etc/group       --contains the group of the system
  /etc/hosts       --the hostname and their IP address that can be recognized by the local machine
  /etc/inetd.conf  --internet server configuration database
  /etc/netconfig   --the network configuration file
  /etc/netstart    --start network for user convenience
  /etc/passwd      --contains the users of the system
  /etc/rc          --start-up script
  /etc/rc.conf     --the configuration file of start-up script
  ... ...
Setting up a network 
In the file /etc/rc.conf, we can configure the network card.
Start-up scripts in FreeBSD 
In FreeBSD, the start-up scripts is in the /etc/rc.d directory. If you want to make them enable, you should set
them in the /etc/rc.conf file.

Katherine Masseau

Differences in installation between FreeBSD and Linux:

During installation the differences between FreeBSD and Linux are not particularily pronounced: the installer's interface and usage bear quite a significant resemblence to those used in many Linux distributions, Debian and Slackware being two particularly notable examples. While the overall experience is quite similar to installing one of these distributions of Linux, there are a few particular areas that are clearly a little bit different.

The first difference one is likely to notice is that the FreeBSD version of the fdisk utility uses some terminology that may be unfamiliar - instead of referring to primary partitions, it refers to slices - in fact, they are the same thing, and merely the terminology has been changed. FreeBSD requires one slice on which to be installed. Meanwhile, after the boot manager has been installed, the FreeBSD DiskLabel Editor will launch, and you may notice that the word 'parititons' has been repurposed - in FreeBSD, the word 'partition' is used not to refer to physical disk partitions , but rather refers to an additional layer of storage abstraction implemented on top of the physical slices on may create on their storage devices (e.g., harddrives, flash media, etc). Many configuration files found in /etc look quite similar to their Linux counterparts, such as fstab, while a few, such as freebsd-update.conf, are clearly new. Additionally, the structure of the rc files is significantly different, with all startup script code contained in a small set of rc.* files located in the /etc/rc.d directory itself, rather than a distinct folder for each level -- indeed, runlevels themselves are absent!

Things I liked about the FreeBSD installer:

The installation experience was simple, to the point, and straightforwards, while providing a fairly wide set of options to customize your installation. The straightforwards, simple user interface was refreshingly uncluttered compared to the GUI installers that have grown popular in some distributions, and I must confess it elicited some nostalgia with the memory of installing Slackware many times (though never more than once on a given machine! How's that for stable?) back in the good old days.

Things I did not like about the FreeBSD installer:

So far, I haven't really found anything to dislike - maybe something will come up later on, during use, but I have no issues with the installer.

Nestor CHAN

I tried to install FreeBSD in my virtual machine for few times. But I still havn't figured out the proper way to install. Instead, I found some valuable, fantastic resources about the differences between Linux, BSD and Solaris. I.'ve summerise and organised the articles and I would love to share with you

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LINUX, FREEBSD AND SUN SOLARIS

PROCESS

The basic unit of scheduling in FreeBSD is the thread; and in Linux, the task_struct. Linux represents processes (and threads) by task_struct structures. A single-threaded process in Linux has a single task_struct. A single-threaded process in FreeBSD has a proc struct, a thread struct, and a ksegrp struct. The ksegrp is a "kernel scheduling entity group." Effectively, both OSes schedule threads, where a thread is a task_struct in Linux and a thread structure in FreeBSD.

MEMORY

FreeBSD describes its process address space by a vmspace, divided into logical sections called regions. Hardware-dependent portions are in the "pmap" (physical map) module and "vmap" routines handle hardware-independent portions and data structures. Linux uses a memory descriptor to divides the process address space into logical sections called "memory areas" to describe process address space. Linux also has a pmap command to examine process address space.

FILES SYSTEM

FreeBSD

ufs 		Default local file system (ufs2, based on BSD Fast Filesystem)
defvs 		Keeps track of /dev files
ext2 		Linux ext2 file system (GNU-based)
nfs 		Remote files
ntfs 		Windows NT file system
smbfs 		Samba file system
portalfs 	Mount a process onto a directory
kernfs 		Files containing various system information

Linux

ext3 		Journaling, extent-based file system from ext2
ext2 		Extent-based file system
afs 		AFS client support for remote file sharing
nfs 		Remote files
coda 		Another networked file system
procfs		Processes, processors, buses, platform specifics
reiserfs 	Journaling file system

Varinder Singh

Installation of freeBSD is a lot different than Other distro i.e. Fedora and Ubuntu. I had installed freeBSD as a virtual machine on Fedora 9.0. with Sun's Virtual Box. During installtion VirtulaBox automatically assign 2GB harddisk space. But when i selected Automatic paritions allocation it raised and error "no space to create partition /usr. After aloting 4GB space it works fine. After installation created the user with "adduser" instead of useradd. adduser command ask lot of quesion while creating. Installtion of packages is a difficult task. Had installed the X-servers/Gnome packages But still unable to run Gnome on FreeBSD.

Mohak Vyas

Tips & Tricks

• Enable root login: login as root. Issue the command 'pw mod user <username> -G wheel'. After issuing this command you'll be able to login as a root from given <username>

• Gnome on FreeBSD: Download the gnome package either during the installation or separately. As a root user add the line 'gnome_enable="YES"' to /etc/rc.conf, then reboot your machine. When you'll boot up you will see gnome desktop environment.

Milton Paiva

• I installed FreeBSD 7.1 on my laptop in a virtual machine that a run on Virtual Box. In the beginning I missed a lot the system-config-* commands I was used to have on Fedora, but time goes on and I found another ways to set up a nic, check the routing table "netstat -r".
• The biggest difference I found was that FreeBSD has all the services setted by default as "locked", then if you need to run something, you have to go there and enable it by yourself.
• Free BSD is not for beginners, once it ask you for everything it need. The opposite of Fedora or Ubuntu, that try to make everything for the user, without asking lot of questions.