Friday, October 16, 2015

FreeBSD 10.2 - Accessing the DVD drive



16 Oct 2015
v 0.2
 
One thing I've found with the Internet - the information you seek is out there, it just requires patience to find it.  So it is with the use of the DVD drive on your FreeBSD installation.  I have a desktop FreeBSD 10.2 installation and until today have not really been able to use the DVD drive.  I knew it was largely a matter of permissions, and had been playing with the " fstab " file to see if I could remedy that.
 
Playing with the " fstab " file is NOT the way to use the DVD.
 
Edit these files to add these lines, assuming your DVD is device cd0:

rc.conf

hald_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"


devfs.conf

# Commonly used by many ports
link    cd0    cdrom
link    cd0    dvd
# permissions to allow cd use by normal user
perm    /dev/cd0    0666
perm    /dev/xpt0    0666
perm    /dev/pass0    0666
 
 
I have Gnome as my desktop, and as soon as I did this .. well ... 

Violas, I had a string section.


.......... later

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Linux, BSD Unix - Some of what I've Learned.

v0.3
04 Oct 15

You have a superseded desktop or laptop gathering dust.  Perhaps you have an itch, or you have a somewhat energetic and inquisitive young one who you would love to see entertained.

First off, if you just want to have a desktop with all the bells and whistles provided, then Linux Mint or Ubuntu are for you.

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

If, however you want to dig a bit deeper then I have a story for you.  Navigating the Linux and BSD maze is a little like an adventure game, full of treading in cow-pats and "oh-wow" moments - and if you are caught off guard, full of career opportunities.

Before I start though, go to Wikipedia and look at the "Unix", "Linux", "Debian", "Slackware" and "FreeBSD"pages.  Having a look at "Distrowatch" wouldn't hurt either...

 So, what is the difference?  Which one to choose?  Here are a few random thoughts I have jotted down that you might find useful.

BSD and Linux

The first thing is that the "BSD" systems are direct descendants of the original Bell Labs UNIX.  If you want to run a Unix system, then choose one of these.  BSD Unicies are developed by a dedicated team to ensure everything works together.  Linux or more correctly GNU / Linux is a  collection of software pieces that together approximates a Unix-like system.  Whilst a person experienced in Linux would find a BSD system familiar, there are distinct differences.

Debian and Slackware

For many years, I ran both Debian and Slackware on various machines at home.  They are each excellent Linux distributions being the two oldest, and the basis for so many other Linux flavours.  One significant thing is that support for desktop features is far stronger in Linux than BSD.  Skype and Flash are two examples, although that "support" is not exactly strong.

Slackware is a KDE desktop-centric distro with no native support for Gnome or dependency checking.  It needs some tweaking of text configuration files - somewhat like Unix.  Debian is Gnome-centric and has excellent administrative tools with extensive dependency checking.

PC-BSD and FreeBSD

Even though I have a lot of respect for these Linux flavours, I now use FreeBSD - so how did that come about?

I moved from Slackware to Debian to get the admin tools and their integrated development cycle, but then gradually I started peeking at PC-BSD for its easy intallation and powerful ZFS file system.  Then Linux changed with many distros going for a new initialisation system called "systemd" which did concern me a little.  I thought of going back to Slackware but then tried PC-BSD for a bit and fell in love with Jails and ZFS.

Two things destroyed my PC-BSD experience.  Upgrades between versions were problematical, though I suspect that has been largely fixed.  The real killer was that it started mis-behaving after a graphic card replacement and then just plain refused to install.  FreeBSD installed fine, which was puzzling since PC-BSD is simply FreeBSD with lovely desktop polish and ease-of-use.

FreeBSD

Why do I like FreeBSD?

Unlike Linux, FreeBSD has a simple base installation.  It is a complete text environment with the Kernel and Userland (utilities) to allow you to use it as a C development platform.

All packages added by you the user are added under " /usr/local ".  I love this for two reasons.
  • This allows sensible partitioning which I have used on an Asus eeepc to install a graphical environment.
  • Updates are easy to understand and perform.  "freebsd-update" updates the base system and "pkg update" updates the user installed packages.
In order to make the most of the power of FreeBSD then the 64 bit version is preferred as the ZFS file system is not as stable on the 32 bit version and so the standard UFS file system is preferred on 32 bit.

ZFS - what is that?  Magic.  Pure Magic.

And for "Steak Knives" you get Jails.  A jail is a type of virtualisation with shared resources - those of you who know about jails will cringe at this but to get the idea across, that will do.

Don't expect to be up and running with FreeBSD in an instant.  Do some reading and watch some Youtube videos.  It is not hard to configure (there are two really important config files - /boot/loader.conf and /etc/rc.conf) and once you get the "zen" of it all it flows easily.

I really like FreeBSD for its stability and consistency - the more I use it the more I love it.



Later ...

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Re-sizing a Virtualbox Debian Guest Window


4 Oct 2015
v 0.21
Ok .. it has been nearly a year .. I guess that means I have a whole swag of material to write about.


It has been driving me nuts.

No matter what I've done, I have not been able to dynamically re-size Debian Jessie in a virtualbox window.  Until yesterday.  Now, whilst I'm describing how to do this in Debian Jessie, the broad principles apply to other guests, such as PC-BSD.

So, here we go.

  • When you install Jessie, select all the video memory you can - a 128mb video card and make sure you have NO 3d acceleration.
  • Once you have done the installation, add contrib to the sources.list file in /etc/apt.



Now, you need to install packages to build your guest additions.  Note here I'm not using the guest additions from the virtualbox site, but those in the Debian repositories.  For most people, the synaptic package manager will be the easiest.

Packages to install:
  • Build essential
  • linux headers for your architecture (headers will probably be pulled in with Build essential and module assistant)
  • module assistant
  • virtualbox guest dkms
  • virtualbox guest X11
  • virtualbox guest source
  • virtualbox guest utils
The key thing here is that you want the X11 module - that is what I was missing before.  You need the guest system to use the Virtualbox graphics drivers.

Now from the command line:
  • m-a prepare
  • m-a
  • Install virtualbox guest from menu
The m-a command will bring up a menu that when you scroll down, you can select the virtualbox modules to install.

reboot

You can now resize window etc.


Violas .. we have a string section.


Later .....