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.

Gregory 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.