Upgrade to a new version

Hello.

I didn't use my notebook for a long time, but this time I decided to start again.
I have upgraded my old Asus x51rl and decided to reinstall the OS from scratch.

First of all, I checked if a new FreeBSD version was available and it was (v10). Of course, I could download the new version .iso image, but:

1. I had not disk to burn the image;
2. I didn't want to do it.

Fortunately, there was the instruction on how to upgrade FreeBSD to the new version from the previous one. So, I decided to reinstall FreeBSD 9.0 from the disk I had and upgrade the installed OS.

But it was not as easy as it was written in the article.
The first step was completed successfully:

# freebsd-update fetch
# freebsd-update install

After restart uname -a showed me 9.0-RELEASE-p3. Well, I tested the tool and it looked like it worked as it supposed to work.

But the next step:

freebsd-update upgrade -r 10.0-RELEASE

returned me the message:

Cowardly refusing to proceed any further. 

 and exited.

So I decided to run this upgrade in 2 steps:

1. freebsd-update upgrade -r 9.2-RELEASE
2. freebsd-update upgrade -r 10.0-RELEASE

And that did the trick. I successfully upgraded my system to the last 9.2 release. And after that I upgraded it to the release 10.0.

But! There is still the last step: upgrading programs.
It recommends to run:

# portmaster -af

but the issue was that I did not have the program installed yet (I had a clean installation). When I tried to install the program from the ports, I got an error:

Improper use of USE_PERL5 in /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk

or something like that. A short googling advised me to update the port's tree.
What I did:

# cd /usr/ports
# make update

Doing that, I was said, that 'make update' uses portsnap and I have to run:

# portsnap fetch extract

The command started, but failed because of the lack of inodes in /var (I have 2Gb there). A short investigation showed me, that it was because of

/var/db/freebsd-update

which had a lot of little files. So, I cleaned downloaded files, the portsnap file:

/var/db/portsnap/4Fuy78jn&...JHjj78.tgz

 and re-run it in 2 steps:

1. # portsnap fetch
2. # portsnap extract

And that time it completed fully successfully.

Good.

So, the last step was to install portmaster and to run:

# portmaster -af

It was completed successfully and I had FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE with the ports upgraded.

Well done.
Let's start to use it.

Java and Flash player for Chromium

Hello everyone.

Well, now I have the X-system and KDE installed, but can anyone imagine modern life without the Web? My favorite browser is Opera, but I decided to install and use the Chromium browser. Why? I don't know. I use Google Chrome in the office and I work with Google Docs often. Well, I guess that's the point.
Anyway, I've already installed it and write this post via it.

And of course, there are Java web applications and a lot of media content exist in the Internet. YouTube, for example, and a lot of others.

First of all, I added:

linux_enable="YES"

to /etc/rc.conf. It is required for some Linux applications, which will run on the system (including the Flash Player for Opera).

The next step was to install JDK (openjdk7 and linux-sun-jdk17) but it didn't help. What should I do now? A short googling moved me there. There was a recommendation to use the HandBook. And the instruction from the HabdBook works!

As people usually say, "When you tried everything and nothing helped, read the manual".

So, now Java applications can be run on my system and I can watch videos via my browser.

Mission complete. 

X-system installation

When ports updated, I want to install X-system.

I will use Xorg+KDE3. Well, it is simple:

Install Xorg is too easy:

# cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg
# make install clean

But its configuration is not. Here are some points:

1. The recommendation is to add the following parameters to /etc/rc.conf to autodetect keyboards and mice:
   
   

   hald_enable="YES"
   dbus_enable="YES"

   
   But both keyboard and touchpad work fine for me without it.
2. Run:
   
   

   # Xorg -configure

   
   If you do, basic X11 configuration file /root/xorg.conf.new will be created. You can tune and test this file before move it to /etc/X11/xorg.conf
3. Also, I've added the following to /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
   
   Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"
   ....
   FontPath "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/"
   ....
   Section "Screen"
   DefaultDepth 24
      SubSection "Display"
           Viewport 0 0
           Depth 24
           Modes "1280x800"
      EndSubSection
4. I like to use KDE, therefore I have installed it via ports. If you want KDE to be started automatically when the system starts (and I wanted it), you have to have the line below in your /etc/ttys file:
   
   ttyv8 "/usr/local/bin/kdm -nodaemon" xterm on secure
   
   

Well, that's all I did. KDE starts well and works fine ^_^ As it usually does.

In my further posts, I'll tell you what software do I use.

Issue with the host name resolving

Hello again.

The issue which I want to describe now appeared in first when I installed the OS.

When the system starts, the messages like presented below appeared in the console:

Jul 7 16:01:40 <host_name> sendmail[366]: My unqualified host name (<host_name>) unknown; sleeping for retry
Jul 7 16:02:40 <host_name>sendmail[366]: unable to qualify my own domain name (<host_name>) -- using short name
Jul 7 16:02:42 <host_name>sm-mta[421]: My unqualified host name (<host_name>) unknown; sleeping for retry
Jul 7 16:03:42 <host_name>sm-mta[421]: unable to qualify my own domain name (<host_name>) -- using short name
Jul 7 16:03:42 <host_name>sm-msp-queue[425]: My unqualified host name (<host_name>) unknown; sleeping for retry
Jul 7 16:04:43 <host_name>sm-msp-queue[425]: unable to qualify my own domain name (firma123) -- using short name

I never met this before, therefore I googled it and found the solutions:

1. If you do not plan to use sendmail, you can disable it.
   Add sendmail_enabled="NONE" to your /etc/rc.conf file.
2. The other way to specify any domain within /etc/hosts. My configuration is:
   

   192.168.2.11 ltr
   192.168.2.11 ltr.my.com
   

As a result, there is no delay on the system start anymore.

Have a nice day!

P.S. Thanks these guys for the answer.

Before application installation

Everyone, hello again.

Sorry for delay, I was really busy last 3 months, so I haven't a time to do any blog's activity. But now I have a time and will continue configuration posts. Lets continue post installation configuration.

I plan to perform all installations via ports and this is mean that I will download everything from Internet. Lets increase the download speed and decrease the load on general FreeBSD.org servers. Create file /etc/make.conf and add into it:

MASTER_SITE_BACKUP?= \
    ftp://ftp8.ua.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR} \
    ftp://ftp7.ua.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR} \
    ftp://ftp6.ua.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR} \
    ftp://ftp5.ua.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR} \
    ftp://ftp4.ua.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR} \
    ftp://ftp3.ua.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR} \
    ftp://ftp2.ua.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR} \
    ftp://ftp.ua.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR}
MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE?= ${MASTER_SITE_BACKUP}

Now, make will check Ukrainian servers first for distributives.

I want to thank these guys for this information.

The next step is to make ports versions actual. Cvsup will help to do it. I will not use it within X-system.

cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui
make
make install

I have to configure it to work with Ukrainian cvsup servers and specify what exactly I want to update. I will use supfile from template:

cp /usr/share/examples/cvsup/cvs-supfile /usr/local/etc/

I want to start this utility via cron, so I don't need graphic interface to it. The command to run update is:

cvsup -g -L 2 <path_to_supfile>

My configuration:

/usr/local/etc/cvs-supfile
*default host=cvsup5.ua.FreeBSD.org
*default base=/var/db
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs tag=.
*default delete use-rel-suffix
*default compress
ports-all

You can use cvsup for src update too, but I don't plane re-build the world this time and will not update something except the ports.

Check handbook for additional information.

Well, now my ports are updated, this process scheduled on a daily basis and I can start X-system installation.

Best regards!
\^_^/

FreeBSD 9.0 Installation

Start data:
Notebook: Asus x51rl
hdd: 120 Gb
RAM: 1 Gb
Network: wi-fi
OS version: 9.0

Installation:
I choose this version because it is the latest stable version of FreeBSD. Additionally, I have already worked with previous versions and want to compare them.

In this version installation became easier then before. I just was asked about disk partitions, what I want to install (ports, src, docs) and the installation started. I'm not sure about is this good change or bad. Actually, I preferred to do the "minimal" installation in previous versions and add exactly what I need later. Well, lets see what we'll get. Possibly, I didn't read installation guide carefully.

After installation the installer asked me about services which i  want auto-start  And now I have only 4 services. Not sure it is good for everyone, but I never used a lot of them, so it is OK for me. Additionally, as I specified above, wi-fi is the only net interface for my NB now, so I was ready to configure wi-fi manually. But installer proposed me to configure my network interfaces and managed it well. Therefore I have Internet on my NB and this is great because I plan to install everything other from ports.

Additionally, the installer proposed me to create a new user and i did it. I need to switch to root from this account, so I defined group wheel for it; my command shell is tcsh.

Now the installation complete and I can configure system now.

Starting

Hello.

I've decided to create this blog for describing my FreeBSD experience. Actually, I worked with FreeBSD 6 and 7 on my notebook, but for some reasons must have stoped.

But now I decided to continue my work with this perfect OS and will describe all my experience here.

My reasons to do it:

1. I have reinstalled FreeBSD a lot of times and every time I searched for configuration information I need again and again because some posts I used before had been deleted when I needed them. But now I will have all it gathered in one place and this will be the information I need only.
2. I want to thank everyone who posted different solutions and possibly my blog will be useful for someone too.
3. I plan to write all posts here in English. Also I plan translate some posts to Japanese. Therefore, it will my language practice too.

Well, I think I have told for this post. So lets start.

どうぞよろしくお願いします。