FreeBSD vs.Linux
No one
Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
Now, obviously, being a newgroup about FreeBSD, most of you will say
that FreeBSD is better....
But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that FreeBSD is
the k-mart version of UNIX.
Mike
Not this again.
Randall D DuCharme
The only real way to settle this question is:
Try them both and decide for yourself!
--
Randall D DuCharme
Systems Engineer Novell, Microsoft, and UNIX Networking Support
Computer Specialists BSDI Internet Success Partners
414-253-9998 414-253-9919 (fax) BSD/OS Authorized Resellers
David Kaczynski
On Wed, 11 Mar 1998 17:50:31 -0700, Mike <mu...@ida.net> wrote:
=No one wrote:
=>
=> Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
=> Now, obviously, being a newgroup about FreeBSD, most of you will
say
=> that FreeBSD is better....
=> But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that
FreeBSD is
=> the k-mart version of UNIX.
=
=Not this again.
What do you mean, "again"? Has this subject been brought up before?
:^P
Frank Pawlak
In article <3507103C...@i.dont.like.spam>,
No one <em...@I.dont.like.spam> writes:
> Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
> But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that FreeBSD is
>
Merlin
No one <em...@I.dont.like.spam> wrote:
: Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
: Now, obviously, being a newgroup about FreeBSD, most of you will say
: that FreeBSD is better....
: But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that FreeBSD is
: the k-mart version of UNIX.
Not able to form you own opinions?
-ck
Peter Adams
In article <6e85qk$iea$2...@nntp1.ba.best.com>, Merlin
<ckn...@shell3.ba.best.com> writes
If the original poster is an absolute beginner, like me, it seems a fair
enough question. All I have managed so far, is to install FreeBSD and
learn a few basic commands. At this stage, the only thing I can say with
certainty, is that it is new and unfamiliar territory - daunting in its
complexity. Even my Unix books are confusing - never mind the perplexing
man pages.
The only thing that sustains me is a desire to eschew Bill Gates and all
his works and make my computer a Microsoft Free Zone.
So yes, I would also like to know from you experienced people whether I
am backing the right horse, or should consider Linux.
--
Peter Adams
Lincolnshire, England
Richard J. Pontefract
Peter Adams wrote:
> If the original poster is an absolute beginner, like me, it seems a fair
> enough question. All I have managed so far, is to install FreeBSD and
> learn a few basic commands. At this stage, the only thing I can say with
> certainty, is that it is new and unfamiliar territory - daunting in its
> complexity. Even my Unix books are confusing - never mind the perplexing
> man pages.
Neither FreeBSD or Linux are going to be Utopia at this point. When
you get a little further down the line you maybe will appreciate the
differences.
> The only thing that sustains me is a desire to eschew Bill Gates and all
> his works and make my computer a Microsoft Free Zone.
Is this a good reason? I use FreeBSD because I am more productive in
that environment than the Microsoft one. I also much prefer the Un*x
philosophy - it works best for what I do. I don't use it because I
dislike Bill Gates and Microsoft.
> So yes, I would also like to know from you experienced people whether I
> am backing the right horse, or should consider Linux.
Consider it. If you don't, you'll never know. Experience both, learn
both, then decide which is right for you. No-one knows except you what
you like, dislike or expect from your computing environment.
But whatever you do, enjoy it.
Rick
Jamie Bowden
On Thu, 12 Mar 1998, Peter Adams wrote:
> If the original poster is an absolute beginner, like me, it seems a fair
> enough question. All I have managed so far, is to install FreeBSD and
> learn a few basic commands. At this stage, the only thing I can say with
> certainty, is that it is new and unfamiliar territory - daunting in its
> complexity. Even my Unix books are confusing - never mind the perplexing
> man pages.
>
> The only thing that sustains me is a desire to eschew Bill Gates and all
> his works and make my computer a Microsoft Free Zone.
>
> So yes, I would also like to know from you experienced people whether I
> am backing the right horse, or should consider Linux.
Of course you should. I prefer FreeBSD personally, but that doesn't make
it right for everyone. Check out all the free x86 unices, and go with
what you are most comfortable with. If you have the bucks, check out the
not so free ones as well. The worst that happens is you learn about
multiple platforms and burn some time.
--
Jamie Bowden
Systems Administrator, iTRiBE.net
If we've got to fight over grep, sign me up. But boggle can go.
-Ted Faber (on Hasbro's request for removal of /usr/games/boggle)
Robert D. Keys
No one <em...@I.dont.like.spam> wrote:
> Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
> Now, obviously, being a newgroup about FreeBSD, most of you will say
> that FreeBSD is better....
> But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that FreeBSD is
> the k-mart version of UNIX.
This kind of thing is often asked, and sometimes gets bad karma.
We probably need a generic unix faq that has valid and reasonable
comparisons of all the different freebies in a level-headed and
sane way.
I will play a bit of the devil's advocate and belch up my IMHO.
I run about 7 odd versions of FreeBSD and Linux on various toy boxes
at home, and only FreeBSD at work. Why... because I can't easily
break the FreeBSD boxes or overload them or cause them to burp.
Every version of Linux I have tried since 0.96 days has worked,
and is fine for a single user box or one that I don't strain too hard.
But, my experiences have been that I can crash a Linux box somewhat
unexpectedly, and at odd times. That may be OK on the home boxes
where I am playing. That is NOT OK on the work boxes in the office,
where I have research data and where it counts for real.
The one thing that sells me on FreeBSD is the install. Linux has
a lot to learn yet, on installs, but it is getting there.
The other thing that sells me on FreeBSD are the autobuilding ports.
Sources are fetched from anywhere in the world and built fresh.
It works essentially every time, and makes me feel better about
having the sources around in the machine's archive directories.
Linux has a lot to learn yet on that sort of feature, but it is
getting there. Canned packages are OK on both systems but I like
the old comfy slippers by the fire feeling I get from having the
sources and port them directly.
Linux has a few more bells and whistles, but you pay for that with
excessive diversity and problems resolving odd inconsistencies,
seemingly because of vendor oriented individualism. That is good
for diversity, but bad for a consistent development system. That
diversity can be fun to play with late at night. I learn a lot
about the karma and whys and wherefores of *nices by playing with
them and tearing them meeces to peeces late at night.
FreeBSD is the everyman's unix for x86ish things. Linux is the
flashy buzzword unix for hackers, or all the latest features and
apps from here and there. Linux gets more press which is interesting
and indicates we need to do more *BSD pr's'manship. FreeBSD has
more consistency in the way it is put together. It is a bit like
apples and oranges again.
Both Linux and FreeBSD are becoming very similar to the average user.
In reality that is good for all the freebie unices here and there.
The differences are mostly cosmetic on the surface. Down deep, the
differences are considerable. Yet, in principle, I can take essentially
anything from either box and go back and forth with it and not usually
have problems, if I start at the source level. Adminning either is
not all that much different. As a play hacker type, I like the
Slackware version of Linux best, but newbies rave about Debian or Red
Hat. To me, they feel more constraining in the way they install and are
put together. Where I want a tiny system, I still prefer the old MCC 1.0+
system (almost vaporware but it installs easily in a toy 386 box with
4 megs ram and maybe 60 megs of HD, and works well for me every time).
Modern FreeBSD and Linux both require a biggie box to be comfy anymore.
In that respect they are very similar. Plan on 16 megs ram minimally,
and 2 gigs HD for a single user workstation, and at least double that
for a working multiuser box with room to play. More than that is gravy
on either system.
I would pose the issue this way...... if you want a stable and consistent
box, my experiences would suggest FreeBSD. If you want to hack a box or
use it only as a single user sort of workstation, then BOTH are good.
Me, I am used to the consistency of FreeBSD, and the peace of mind that
comes from not having to fuss with it as much as with a Linux box.
I am waiting for the next big issue of Linux and for 3.0FreeBSD, and
then will do some more serious comparisons on my home boxes. For now,
I hedge my bet with FreeBSD where it counts and Linux or FreeBSD or
NetBSD or Minix or Coherent or AIX or (lots of oldies but goodies)
at home where I can play and a crash or two are expected now and then.
Your mileage may vary......
RDK
Zenin
Richard J. Pontefract <r...@kietra.u-net.com> wrote:
: I don't use it because I dislike Bill Gates and Microsoft.
>snip<
True, but it's never a bad side effect. :P
--
-Zenin
ze...@best.com
Merlin
Peter Adams <Pe...@brig.demon.co.uk> wrote:
: In article <6e85qk$iea$2...@nntp1.ba.best.com>, Merlin
: <ckn...@shell3.ba.best.com> writes
: >No one <em...@I.dont.like.spam> wrote:
: >: Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
: >: Now, obviously, being a newgroup about FreeBSD, most of you will say
: >: that FreeBSD is better....
: >: But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that FreeBSD is
: >: the k-mart version of UNIX.
: >Not able to form you own opinions?
: >
: >-ck
: If the original poster is an absolute beginner, like me, it seems a fair
: enough question.
Absolute beginners do not munge their headers so that an intelligent conversation
via email is no longer possible. For obvious reasons I am treating the
original post as a troll.
Your post, on the other hand, is intelligent and well written.
: All I have managed so far, is to install FreeBSD and
: learn a few basic commands. At this stage, the only thing I can say with
: certainty, is that it is new and unfamiliar territory - daunting in its
: complexity. Even my Unix books are confusing - never mind the perplexing
: man pages.
But that is not just FreeBSD. That is X-nix in general: Solaris, Linux,
UnixWare, SCO, etc. It is rough enough when the commands are cryptic, but
without an understanding of the conceptual differences between unix and other
operating systems, it can be downright impossible.
Still, this is a factor both FreeBSD and Linux suffer. Neither one is better
at being less unix-like. Wouldn't be much point to that, would there? :)
: The only thing that sustains me is a desire to eschew Bill Gates and all
: his works and make my computer a Microsoft Free Zone.
Whatever floats your boat. I, personally, am a Computer Whore. I will
work on ANYTHING as long as you can afford my rates. I think that some
of Microsoft's products are quite useful, but that doesn't make me a
religious freak in either direction. I have Win95, Win98, WinNT, FreeBSD,
SunOS, Linux and MacOS boxes in my home. Yet you will never get me to
say wich one is BETTER because they all have their purpose.
: So yes, I would also like to know from you experienced people whether I
: am backing the right horse, or should consider Linux.
This isn't a race. FreeBSD and Linux are free Operating Systems. Neither
one can truely win. If the Linux and FreeBSD development community took
a cruise on the Titanic, the OS would not die, would not become unusable.
To answer your question: Since you wonder if you should try Linux, then
by all means do so! How else will YOU know. There is no 'right' answer,
there is only what makes you happy. If happy is running your http server
then great. If happy is a neat GUI, cool! Your call. Go buy yourself a
cheap one gigger, pull out your FreeBSD drive for a week, and give Linux
a try.
Have fun!
-ck
Robert D. Keys
Peter Adams <Pe...@brig.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <6e85qk$iea$2...@nntp1.ba.best.com>, Merlin
> <ckn...@shell3.ba.best.com> writes
> >No one <em...@I.dont.like.spam> wrote:
> >: Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
> >: Now, obviously, being a newgroup about FreeBSD, most of you will say
> >: that FreeBSD is better....
> >: But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that FreeBSD is
> >: the k-mart version of UNIX.
> If the original poster is an absolute beginner, like me, it seems a fair
> enough question. All I have managed so far, is to install FreeBSD and
> learn a few basic commands. At this stage, the only thing I can say with
> certainty, is that it is new and unfamiliar territory - daunting in its
> complexity. Even my Unix books are confusing - never mind the perplexing
> man pages.
You raise a very good question that is not adequately covered in the
generic unices newsfeeds and really needs to be seriously thought out
and answered in a comparative FAQ somewhere. That will be good for
all the generic freebie unices.
To beginners, it is all like closing our eyes and hoping for the best.
That is one of the unfortunate things about learning unix, unless you
take a class in it somewhere.
> The only thing that sustains me is a desire to eschew Bill Gates and all
> his works and make my computer a Microsoft Free Zone.
We all have that kindred spirit to share with you.
I sense that somewhere we all need to put the religeous slants aside
and really think out how to approach some kind of generic ``welcome
to bonehead unix 100A'' type of freebie internet book that is basic
enough for all to get them bootstrapped into some semblance of user
mode. That first boot and install and login is the hardest though,
and was for all of us. You should find that in a few weeks, it all
begins to become second nature, and builds from there.
> So yes, I would also like to know from you experienced people whether I
> am backing the right horse, or should consider Linux.
Actually, I will play the devil's advocate here again, and suggest
that if you have a CD box of some kind, you get a set of each and
run them up, play for a day or so, nuke the box and run up the other
and play for a day or so, and then sit back and use which feels most
comfy to you. Take what everyone says with two grains of salt, until
you have had some comparison, yourself.
I do this all the time with every new incantation of *nix that I can
get for free or get thrown at me rather than the dumpster, and it
is one of the best ways to learn. I run AIX, FreeBSD, Linux, Minix,
Coherent, and Dos (with a set of unix tools that make it play like
unix). Out of all of those, I find AIX the most stable, but too
expensive, unless you luck into one somewhere. FreeBSD I would rate
second because of ease of install, and the consistency of the system
and sources across revisions. Linux is fun because it is always
changing, so there is always something new to try or play with.
That comes at a price of a higher degree of crashing than FreeBSD,
so I put FreeBSD on boxes that count, and play with Linux. Minix
is a good toy, but not yet to a serious stage for a good workstation.
I sense it will be in a year or two. Coherent is interesting, but it is
vaporware, since the company is long belly-up. It has very good generic
unix manuals, and lots of good explanations if you ever find a manual
loose. I keep dos (5.0) around for compatiblity with my lab dataloggers.
It is a good way to clone unix images and with a good set of tar/gzip/etc,
and troff and TeX and vi, it feels close enough to unix be usable.
If you already have FreeBSD up, I think you are well on your way,
and with lots of referring to the manpages (and printing out a few
choice ones for reference) and the handbook, and maybe finding some
generic unix books like the O'Reilly sort of things or even the old
K&Pish or AT&T things, you will learn faster than you think. You will
find that most of what you do as a user is done in around a dozen
odd commands. As a sysadmin, you probably need a repertoire of maybe
30-50 commands, and you can run a good machine. The rest is only used
occasionally in reality, and can be looked up in the manpages.
> Peter Adams
> Lincolnshire, England
Good Luck, Peter......
RDK
Jordan K. Hubbard
No one wrote:
>
> Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
> Now, obviously, being a newgroup about FreeBSD, most of you will say
> that FreeBSD is better....
> But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that FreeBSD is
> the k-mart version of UNIX.
A word of advice: If you ever decide to seriously look for opinions on
anything, be it anything from a new car or a new operating system, lose
the flame-bait at the end since it essentially invalidates the question
by making everyone respond just to the last bit at the end (e.g. "Of
course it's not a k-mart version of UNIX! What idiot propagandist
filled your head full of that kind of disinformation?").
Oh yeah, the answer: "Of course FreeBSD is better..."* :-)
* Shorthand for "I haven't got the time to enumerate all the reasons
since there are already 10 million unanswered emails in my inbox and if
I want to wear my fingers off in typing, I'll wear them off more
productively in the pursuit of clearing that inbox." :-)
--
- Jordan Hubbard
FreeBSD core team / Walnut Creek CDROM.
scud
first of all i am linux user. if i understand it right difference between
freebsd and linux is that linux is systemV and freebsd is bsd unix. Linux
have many more users and big companies have begin releasing some appz for
linux (like corel), also O'Reilly have released many books on linux (i
haven't seen yet any on freebsd) while freebsd is kind a more stable than
linux but i have used linux now in 9 months and never expirienced system
crash so i think that linux is litlle ahead of freebsd even if freebsd
is not bad choice ....
/ scud
Merlin
scud <sc...@dataphone.se> wrote:
: first of all i am linux user. if i understand it right difference between
Another point regarding FreeBSD: Its users tend to me more literate.
-ck
Lowell Gilbert
fpa...@execpc.com (Frank Pawlak) writes:
>No one <em...@I.dont.like.spam> writes:
> > Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
> What walks like a trol, looks like a trol, and quacks like atrol?
I'd go so far as to say that these days (with both Linux and FreeBSD
having improved so much in the last year or so), my favorite thing
about FreeBSD is that it doesn't have adherents who go out and troll
other newsgroups...
--
Lowell Gilbert low...@world.std.com
"The first cup of coffee recapitulates phylogeny." -- Ted Sturgeon, allegedly
Robert D. Keys
Jordan K. Hubbard <j...@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> No one wrote:
> >
> > Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
> > that FreeBSD is better....
> > But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that FreeBSD is
> > the k-mart version of UNIX.
> A word of advice: If you ever decide to seriously look for opinions on
> anything, be it anything from a new car or a new operating system, lose
> the flame-bait at the end since it essentially invalidates the question
> by making everyone respond just to the last bit at the end (e.g. "Of
> course it's not a k-mart version of UNIX! What idiot propagandist
> filled your head full of that kind of disinformation?").
Hey Jordan.... mail jhk < tallcoolbrew.16oz......
It was not a troll, I don't think, or at least I have gotten some
sidemail that did not seem to be trolling. There are a lot of
interested folks out there that only have Linux exposure in no
big way, and might be interested in FreeBSD. I sense a lot of
them ask the trollingsounding which is better thing mainly because
they don't know any different.
The k-mart thing does bring up an interesting ploy....
.... why not market a FreeBSD CD in a chain like k-mart for
the exposure?
That might give us a one-upsmanship on Linux.....(:+}}...... or
at least raise the FreeBSD awareness amongst the garden shoppers.
Something like a small idiots guide or a printout of the handbook
on inexpensive paper bindings and then a cd of 2.2.5 or something.
That kind of bottom-end exposure would be good, if done well.
Whether or not it is practical or would open the wrong floodgates,
I dunno. But, it did seem like an interesting potential outlet.
Maybe that kind of marketing mass would make us competitive with
the horde.
> Oh yeah, the answer: "Of course FreeBSD is better..."* :-)
We know that, or we would not be here. I do still have a couple of
toy boxes at home that I do run up anyandall flavors on for comparison
because even I sometimes wonder what is better or different (and the
reality is that the worlds are growing closer day by day --- and that
is good for freebie unices in general).
I, for one, would like to see some kind of honest comparisons soundly
and not to religiously done, posted in the comp.unix.questions feed
that would help folks make some choices. All they seem to hear is
Linux first and somewhere in the bilges *BSD surfaces. We need to
do FreeBSD better than that.
> * Shorthand for "I haven't got the time to enumerate all the reasons
> since there are already 10 million unanswered emails in my inbox and if
> I want to wear my fingers off in typing, I'll wear them off more
> productively in the pursuit of clearing that inbox." :-)
I extend my kudos to your efforts and comments over the years.
They have helped me many times.
All said and done, though, we need more visibility as the flock
runs out of the windoz barn and out into the light. All they see
now is a big Linux banner. Somewhere we need to run up a FreeBSD
banner. Rah Rah Rah!
> - Jordan Hubbard
> FreeBSD core team / Walnut Creek CDROM.
Regards..... RDK
Alexander Viro
Albert! Who LARTed you this time? Why did I miss it? Please, be a good
boy, shut up. At least here.
Al
PS: Explanation for FreeBSD folks (especially for newbies): Albert is our
local kook (our == Linux folks). Usually when somebody LARTs this moron
hard enough he disappears for a while from c.o.l.* and goes to troll other
groups. But he returns to us. Always. And always it happens _too_ soon.
He's responsible for long and nasty Linux vs. FreeBSD flamewar in
December-January (along with several other, er, gentlemen). Please, for
your and our sanity - don't take this idiot seriously.
Tony Porczyk
No one <em...@I.dont.like.spam> writes:
Actually, your email looks like a spammers' address or perhaps a
troller's address, but I will take you seriously this time.
>Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
They're both excellent systems. I use FreeBSD at work because of
consistency in releases and tech support.
>Now, obviously, being a newgroup about FreeBSD, most of you will say
>that FreeBSD is better....
Not really. I do use Linux Redhat at home. It is an excellent package.
You cannot go wrong with it.
>But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that FreeBSD is
>the k-mart version of UNIX.
I have no idea. Perhaps your friend doesn't have a clue? I have
used in my business life Solaris, SunOS (the BSD stuff), SCO, HPUX,
Linux, and FreeBSD. Of the last two, I would prefer to use FreeBSD
in the business environment. However, depending on your needs,
Linux could be just as fine. In fact, since you didn't say what
it was you wanted to do, perhaps Win95 would be best for you?
t.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Tony Porczyk * to...@infobound.com * San Jose, California
GIT/ED d++(!d) s++:++ a? C++++ USB++++$ P+ E- W(--) N++ !k w--- M- V?
PS+++ PE++ Y+ PGP-- t+@ 5++ X-- R* b- D---- e* V-- h* r+++(*)+++(*)>?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Tony Porczyk
scud <sc...@dataphone.se> writes:
> first of all i am linux user. if i understand it right difference
> between freebsd and linux is that linux is systemV and freebsd is
> bsd unix. Linux have many more users and big companies have begin
> releasing some appz for linux (like corel), also O'Reilly have
> released many books on linux (i haven't seen yet any on freebsd)
Actually there is a multi-volume set on BSD 4.4.
> while freebsd is kind a more stable than linux but i have used
> linux now in 9 months and never expirienced system crash so i think
> that linux is litlle ahead of freebsd even if freebsd is not bad
> choice ....
Hear, hear.... Both are great systems.
So, the answer is, try them both, and pick one depending on your needs.
Unless all you want to do is word processing, either of them will be a
MUCH better choice than any of the MickySoft operating systems.
dannyman
Peter Adams <Pe...@brig.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> The only thing that sustains me is a desire to eschew Bill Gates and all
> his works and make my computer a Microsoft Free Zone.
Amen. Though I kinda know what I'm doing now. :)
> So yes, I would also like to know from you experienced people whether I
> am backing the right horse, or should consider Linux.
"Right" horse? imho, FreeBSD is a lot easier for a newbie to administer, but
doesn't deliver all the latest features as quick. I'd say Linux is for folks
in between hard-core administrator types and newbies. I'd prolly be
comfortable with Linux, but given the simplicity of adminning FreeBSD for what
I demand - a working, low-maintainence Unix system - FreeBSD gives me
everything I need.
--
//Dan -=- This message brought to you by djho...@uiuc.edu -=-
\\/yori -=- Information - http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/djhoward/ -=-
aiokomete -=- Our Honored Symbol deserves an Honorable Retirement
dannyman
Merlin <ckn...@shell3.ba.best.com> wrote:
> scud <sc...@dataphone.se> wrote:
> : first of all i am linux user. if i understand it right difference between
> : freebsd and linux is that linux is systemV and freebsd is bsd unix. Linux
> : have many more users and big companies have begin releasing some appz for
> : linux (like corel), also O'Reilly have released many books on linux (i
> : haven't seen yet any on freebsd) while freebsd is kind a more stable than
> : linux but i have used linux now in 9 months and never expirienced system
> : crash so i think that linux is litlle ahead of freebsd even if freebsd
> : is not bad choice ....
> Another point regarding FreeBSD: Its users tend to me more literate.
^^
YM "FreeBSD has some arrogant American users." HTH
Give the Swede a break. It's clear what he had to say. I think your attitude
is very destructive. :(
Merlin
dannyman <dann...@arh0300.urh.uiuc.edu> wrote:
: > : first of all i am linux user. if i understand it right difference between
: > : freebsd and linux is that linux is systemV and freebsd is bsd unix. Linux
: > : have many more users and big companies have begin releasing some appz for
: > : linux (like corel), also O'Reilly have released many books on linux (i
: > : haven't seen yet any on freebsd) while freebsd is kind a more stable than
: > : linux but i have used linux now in 9 months and never expirienced system
: > : crash so i think that linux is litlle ahead of freebsd even if freebsd
: > : is not bad choice ....
: > Another point regarding FreeBSD: Its users tend to me more literate.
: ^^
: YM "FreeBSD has some arrogant American users." HTH
: Give the Swede a break. It's clear what he had to say. I think your attitude
: is very destructive. :(
I said 'more literate', I did not say 'better typists'. :)
As far as 'clear what he had to say'... There is at least one printed book
on FreeBSD, he must not have looked at http://www.freebsd.org/ in his search.
http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/handbook303.html#651
As far as my attitude... I think it's pretty damn good for a posting made
in a thread that started with a troll. What's your excuse?
-ck
Giao Nguyen
Albert D. Cahalan <acah...@saturn.cs.uml.edu> wrote:
> That would depend on many things: IDE or SCSI, SMP or not?
> Dejanews is running on SMP Linux. They used to run BSD, but it
> crashed too much.
This is a really dumb point. Who runs Linux or FreeBSD or WinNT doesn't
matter. Everyone picks an OS for different reasons. If there was a
clearly defined winner in the OS wars, we wouldn't be sitting around
with a variety of OSes. This is akin to the "What's the best Linux
distribution?" question that is often asked.
> You get original unmodified source with both Debian and Red Hat.
> There is a build process that applies patches, just like with BSD.
> You won't get patch failures ever.
I haven't used Linux in a long time. Someone refresh my memory. Is
there complete source tree for the entire OS? When I say "OS" I
don't mean just the kernel.
> > Adminning either is not all that much different. As a play hacker
> > type, I like the Slackware version of Linux best,
> Slackware is too much like BSD.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing. RedHat is too much like System
V. I can't tell if I like it (SysV) or hate it (SysV) yet. I've
used BSD long enough for it to be a habit. You don't hate your habits.
You just live with it. I hope for SysV to be a habit too. I become
more marketable that way.
> I can do light kernel and app development (with X) in 600 MB.
What percentage of Linux users do kernel and app development?
<rant>
I've often wondered why people get into arguments about OS'es. I
suppose it makes you feel better that you're not the only one using
brand X. As for me, I use whatever the admins install and I use and
cope happily.
</rant>
la...@ws6502.gud.siemens.co.at
vi...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) writes:
Is he a real person at all, or a new version of "Jesus Munroy, Jr." perl
script which[1] did the *BSD folks a great disservice in the olden days of
1993?
/Marino
[1] who, actually. J. M. Jr. was/is a real person TTBOMK.
--
As far as the differences between BSD and Systems V, that's
simple. System V sucks and BSD doesn't. :) -- Curt Welch
UNIX _is_ user friendly. It's just selective about who its
friends are. -- Marco Molteni
Jordan K. Hubbard
Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
> > This kind of thing is often asked, and sometimes gets bad karma.
> > We probably need a generic unix faq that has valid and reasonable
> > comparisons of all the different freebies in a level-headed and
> > sane way.
>
> Sure, I'll write it.
Uh, Albert, he said *valid and reasonable* comparisons. Having you
write such a FAQ would be like having David Duke write an endorsement
for the United Negro College Fund.
--
Tim Smith
>Another point regarding FreeBSD: Its users tend to me more literate.
How's your Swedish, asshole?
Peter Adams
In article <6e9uko$32k$4...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, dannyman <dannyman@arh0300
.urh.uiuc.edu> writes
>Peter Adams <Pe...@brig.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> The only thing that sustains me is a desire to eschew Bill Gates and all
>> his works and make my computer a Microsoft Free Zone.
>
>Amen. Though I kinda know what I'm doing now. :)
Thank you for your helpful reply.
I'm not really a dedicated Microsoft basher, but I am fed up with being
forced to allocate resources to features I will never use. Internet
Explorer 4 was the straw that broke the camel's back. The main
attraction of Unix is that I hope, eventually, to be able to tailor the
operating system to my own requirements.
> I'd prolly be
>comfortable with Linux, but given the simplicity of adminning FreeBSD for what
>I demand - a working, low-maintainence Unix system - FreeBSD gives me
>everything I need.
>
Being a retired soldier, I use my computer only for private, e-mail and
hobby purposes, and my main reason for wanting to depart from Microsoft
is to drop out of the bigger, better, faster rat race.
Your assessment encourages me to believe that, after a lot of work,
FreeBSD will achieve this for me.
Peter
la...@ws6502.gud.siemens.co.at
Peter Adams <Pe...@brig.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
> Being a retired soldier, I use my computer only for private, e-mail and
> hobby purposes, and my main reason for wanting to depart from Microsoft
> is to drop out of the bigger, better, faster rat race.
>
> Your assessment encourages me to believe that, after a lot of work,
> FreeBSD will achieve this for me.
>
Yes, it will, I can vouch for that. Netscape is still a pig, though :)
but I can execute my work happily on a 486/33 with 16 MB of RAM, ISA
only without problem. With Netscape, the slowest link is still the
33.6k modem which remains constant regardless of the CPU speed. It
will not even require a lot of work to set it up--for me it takes less
time than setting up an equivalent Windows machine but I'm an old unix
head and these things are like a second nature to me.
I am certain that Linux could fulfill the same task, but at the time that
I switched FreeBSD seemed to deal better with an overloaded machine (and
any machine loaded with task set requiring five to six fold the available
RAM is overloaded even though the CPU load may lead you to believe other-
wise). Furthermore, the FreeBSD online documentation was more thorough
and more consistent--I don't care for books much: you cannot grep dead
trees :)
I've been using FreeBSD as my OS of choice ever since and have had no
reason to contemplate a switch to Linux again.
/Marino
Bill Gunshannon
In article <6e94vo$s9q$1...@nntp1.ba.best.com>, Merlin <ckn...@shell3.ba.best.com> writes:
|>
|> But that is not just FreeBSD. That is X-nix in general: Solaris, Linux,
|> UnixWare, SCO, etc. It is rough enough when the commands are cryptic, but
|> without an understanding of the conceptual differences between unix and other
|> operating systems, it can be downright impossible.
|>
Why does everyone always claim the UNIX commands are cryptic and every
other OS is crystal clear??
VMS: SET DEFAULT device-name[directory]
Set default what?? Printer?? Terminal type?? If one had never
worked with VMS, how would one know that "DEFAULT" refered to a
directory??
VMS: ASSIGN/USER A.OUT SYS$OUTPUT
Yeah, that's real clear and intuitively obvious. Much easier
to understand than "> a.out"
And I won't even get into IBM's OSes.
But UNIX, now that's real cryptic.
pwd - Print Working Directory
cwd - Change Working Directory
dc - Desk Calculator
cc - C Compiler
pc - Pascal Compiler
fc - Fortran Compiler
mkdir - MaKe DIRectory
rmdir - ReMove DIRectory
ln - LiNk
rm - ReMove
Any jargon is going to seem confusing to the un-initiated, but UNIX's
curt commands are not any more cryptic or confusing than the commands
used in any other OS. And going back to my "UNIX for VMS Users" book
from which the few VMS examples above came (I am not a VMS user!) what
is most noticable is all the things that can be done on any common UNIX
system for which there is no VMS equivalent.
UNIX is no more cryptic or difficult to learn than any other OS. And
at it's basic level it puts far more power in the hands of the user than
the majority of the others. And because of how well it implements the
"Software Tools" (anybody here even remember the book??) approach, it is
extremely easy implement new and more powerful functions.
Oh, one more thing to think about. How many times have people gone to
the trouble of porting the UNIX environment to foreign OSes?? Eunice
for VMS. PRIMIX for Primos. Software Tools (from Ga. Tech I think) for
UNIVAC Exec8. Or MKS for that matter. Ever see anyone port VMS or MVS
or CTS work alike systems to UNIX?? I didn't think so.
Just some food for thought.
bill
--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bi...@cs.uofs.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
John Ruschmeyer
scud wrote:
> first of all i am linux user. if i understand it right difference between
> freebsd and linux is that linux is systemV and freebsd is bsd unix. Linux
> have many more users and big companies have begin releasing some appz for
> linux (like corel), also O'Reilly have released many books on linux (i
> haven't seen yet any on freebsd) while freebsd is kind a more stable than
> linux but i have used linux now in 9 months and never expirienced system
> crash so i think that linux is litlle ahead of freebsd even if freebsd
> is not bad choice ....
First, a minor nit, Linux is not SystemV in that it is not derived from
AT&T/UnixLabs/SCO software. It does, however, have "feel" more like
System V than anything else.
As for me, I run a mix of OS's: Win95 and FreeBSD on a 486/66, NetBSD on
an old Sparc 2, MacOS, etc. I've also run Linux at various times. So,
what are my thoughts?
I think a lot of the choice of a free Unix depends on what hardware you
have, what you want do to with it, and what compromises you are willing
to make.
Take the first question, if we limit ourselves to x86 hardware, that
still leaves a lot of ground to cover. Ask yourself, do you have (or
want to run) some new hot gadget (LS120 floppy, Parallel Port Zip)?
If so, your choice of driver may well be limited for a time. In that
regard, it may be necessary to just grab an OS which supports what
you have, unless you want to wait or take on the job of writing a
driver yourself.
In terms of obsucre driver support, I tend to want to give the nod
to Linux. Certainly, the Linux community seems to want to support
just about anything that ever plugged into an ISA bus. (I don't
recall FreeBSD supporting use of an XT hard drive controller.)
In writing the above, I'm reminded of my early impressions of the
two communities. The FreeBSD camp seemed the sort to have had some
kind of Berkeley Unix background and usually ran the OS on somewhat
"high end" systems (for their time). The Linux camp, on the other
hand, seemed to be more the type to cobble a box together out of
whatever they had laying around in the parts bin. Both camps have
long since matured and their respective OS's have reached "prime
time", but I think the early flavor is still there.
As for the other reasons for choosing a Unix, there is the
question of what do you want to do? For most basic tasks, there
is no real difference. The issue comes up when you start to
encounter specific tools which may only exist on one platform.
There you start to look at the compromises: things like emulated
environments, etc. Only you can decide how important this is to
you.
One final comment... much of the thread has been devoted to running
"Microsoft-free" systems. For many of us, that is not an option
or, at least, a desirable choice. We still want or need to
run apps like Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. For people like me,
the question becomes one of which Unix can better support
applications written for the evil empire's OS.
To be honest, though I run FreeBSD, my gut feeling is that the
real answer is either SCO or Linux. I've run SCO ODT and was
impressed with the DOS/Windows integration. I've run Wine under
FreeBSD and (unless things have improved in -CURRENT) was left
with the feeling that it does not come into its own unless you
run Linux. Ditto for Wabi which, I gather, won't run under
FreeBSD's Linux emulation.
Just my $0.02.
<<<John>>>
P.S. In case anyone is wondering, I run FreeBSD for two reasons:
1) A good friend (pec...@monmouth.com) who is a big supporter
and 2) Because the Linux distreib I was last trying to install
(Caldera OpenLinux) did not like my CD-ROM (Mitsumi LU005 on
a Sound Galaxy NXPro sound card).
Peter Johansson
No one <em...@I.dont.like.spam> wrote:
> Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
That's a lot like saying which is better, Win95 or In NT. You will
get as many opinions as a*******.
> Now, obviously, being a newgroup about FreeBSD, most of you will say
> that FreeBSD is better....
I prefer FreeBSD over Linux because FreeBSD is more stable in a
production environment. Linux has support for a broader section of
hardware and better support for games. I suppose if I wanted to play
games, I'd be better of with Linux.
The only cost to try them both out is your time, so why don't you do
that and make your own decision?
> But why? Give some reasons.....Someone keeps telling me that FreeBSD is
> the k-mart version of UNIX.
Personally, I think of it more as the New York Public Library version
of Unix. (Well, at least it's a _better_ analogy.)
Peter Johansson
pe...@widgetworks.com
Robert D. Keys
Jordan K. Hubbard <j...@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> > > (...and RDK once said.....)
Well, I would not like to rustle too many feathers, but, since I like
to play with all the toy unices and see what makes them tick, I can
appreciate others wanting to have some sort of level-headed and sane
comparison. At present there really is nothing to go on other than
word of mouth or buzz in the press or the guy across the dorm hall
runs it, etc. I realize that that comparison will change over time
as each version matures. But, I do know, when I was first playing
I would download one, try it for a while, then another, and the like.
Now, I find keeping an HD loaded for whatever flavor I want to play
with and then a quick wrench twist and toss in a new flavored drive
works for me in five minutes or so. It would have been good to have
had some sane faq comparing them all. Instead, I had to read all the
docs and installs and readmes for each flavor and then try to make some
kind of resonable selection of one. The point is that a newbie comes
up, probably not too savvy on *nix in general, but his interest is
perked, and he wants to try something. The buzz and press flaps Linux.
That would tend to give him a one-sided view, unless he has something
else to compare or go by. The main unix faq just lists things and
then basically sidesteps the issue. The whole unix group needs to
have some sort of good (take 10 pages a discuss each then take several
pages of tables and point out strengths and weaknesses of each and
realistic hardware requirements for various kinds of use, then maybe
give them some kind of ``best used for'' X Y or Z rating). I would
like to see something like that done for all the generic freebie
and low cost solutions. That would take a grant from someone probably
(maybe one of the public or private funding foundations) but might be
interesting to do. Then a good bonehead intro unix 100A internet
book of some sort, to give all a running start..... That would drum
up good karma from those wanting to leave the other windoz world,
but really not knowing where to go or what to turn to, in a rational
way.
Ahh, I am dreaming.....
RDK
Robert D. Keys
> > No one <em...@I.dont.like.spam> wrote:
> >> Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
> >> that FreeBSD is better....
> >> the k-mart version of UNIX.
> >
> > We probably need a generic unix faq that has valid and reasonable
> > comparisons of all the different freebies in a level-headed and
> > sane way.
> Sure, I'll write it.
If you can, in a sane and level-headed way. Do. If not, dont.
> > Every version of Linux I have tried since 0.96 days has worked,
> > and is fine for a single user box or one that I don't strain too hard.
> > But, my experiences have been that I can crash a Linux box somewhat
> > unexpectedly, and at odd times. That may be OK on the home boxes
> > where I am playing. That is NOT OK on the work boxes in the office,
> > where I have research data and where it counts for real.
> That would depend on many things: IDE or SCSI, SMP or not?
> Dejanews is running on SMP Linux. They used to run BSD, but it
> crashed too much.
I would like to know particulars. Be specific.
I tend to run very plain boxes (486/16m/ide/2gig/S3) on my main machines.
I do that for a reason, it is cheap and easy to fix, and parts abound.
Any flavor of whichever os runs fairly well.
The specific reason that I finally went to FreeBSD was becuse I could
not get the internet flow to work as well on Linux 2.0.29 (if I remember
the version right). Every time I have run up FreeBSD, the ethernet
works flawlessly.
I tend not to load up my boxes as would a big ISP, so I could not comment
there, but still, would be interested in particulars. That would be
important to consider in choosing something like a departmental server.
> > The one thing that sells me on FreeBSD is the install. Linux has
> > a lot to learn yet, on installs, but it is getting there.
> You use an obsolete Slackware system for some odd reason.
> (perhaps because Walnut Creek is pushing it?)
The latest one from sunsite. Granted that is not the most current,
but it is not that old. I also just ran off the latest debian and
will compare that over the next few days. I have heard too many
gotchas on RedHat for now. Many seem to be returning to the 4 level
series.
> > Canned packages are OK on both systems but I like the old
> > comfy slippers by the fire feeling I get from having the
> > sources and port them directly.
> You get original unmodified source with both Debian and Red Hat.
> There is a build process that applies patches, just like with BSD.
> You won't get patch failures ever.
> > Adminning either is not all that much different. As a play hacker
> > type, I like the Slackware version of Linux best,
> Slackware is too much like BSD.
> > but newbies rave about Debian or Red Hat. To me, they feel more
> > constraining in the way they install and are put together.
> Always remember: you can delete the GUI if it doesn't help you.
> Of course, you might prefer point-and-click if you break your
> left hand.
Not too likely. I run unix commandline rather than point and click,
unless I must. It works better that way on lowend boxes. Also, by
the time you clickalloverhereandtheretogetsomethingdone, a simple
command line pipe and you ARE done.
> > Modern FreeBSD and Linux both require a biggie box to be comfy anymore.
> > In that respect they are very similar. Plan on 16 megs ram minimally,
> > and 2 gigs HD for a single user workstation,
> 2 gigabytes!!! You'd need that for serious OS development maybe,
> with complete source an object files for almost everything.
> I can do light kernel and app development (with X) in 600 MB.
Not really. Sure, one of my writing boxes at home runs 3.0 snaps
in a 232 meg ide drive on a mono monitor with 8 megs of ram. That
is fine for TeX and troffing, but is a bit constrained for anything
else. The work boxes are mainly lab/office funnels for writing,
data processing, and networking. On those, I find a 1 gig drive
fills up too quick on a single user workstation and the big research
box fills up too quick with less than 2 gigs (it runs 5 now).
That is not doing any os development, but I do run a lot of ports
and a lot of data through. A 2 gig drive is just about the minimal
for a serious workstation in my hands. In 5 years 20 gigs will
probably feel too small.
RDK
Merlin
Tim Smith <t...@halcyon.com> wrote:: >Another point regarding FreeBSD: Its users tend to be more literate.
: How's your Swedish, asshole?
Bork bork bork!
Smeghead.
-ck
Alexander Viro
In article <iy7afav...@ws6502.gud.siemens.co.at>,
marino....@siemens.at <la...@ws6502.gud.siemens.co.at> wrote:
[snip]
>Is he a real person at all, or a new version of "Jesus Munroy, Jr." perl
>script which[1] did the *BSD folks a great disservice in the olden days of
>1993?
>
>/Marino
>
>[1] who, actually. J. M. Jr. was/is a real person TTBOMK.
Hmm... Nice idea, but IMHO it's unlikely. Too complicated. It's
not yet another Th*l*n[-1][0]. He trolls by hands[2].
Cheers,
Al
[-1] As in t*rk*y[1]
[0] If you don't know who is it - consider yourself lucky.
[1] knock, knock, knock...
[2] Or whatever part of his body he prefers to use.
Rahul Dhesi
I just finished installing Redhat Linux 5.0 on an Intel architecture
machine. A while ago I installed FreeBSD 2.2.5 on an equivalent
machine. The FreeBSD installation went smoothly, and almost all my
questions were answered in the online documentation.
The Linux installation did not go smoothly, and I had to search quite
hard, and spend quite a bit of time on trial-and-error, to complete the
install. Part of the problem lies in the Redhat installation
procedures. At a couple of different places the Redhat installation
software put me in an infinte loop and I had to reboot the machine to
break the loop. One example:
When I specified the size of the swap partition, I got the error
message saying it could not be greater than 128 megabytes. So I
specified it as 128 M and got the same error message again. I had to
make it 127 M. The installation program changed it to 133 M
(requested = 127 but allocated = 133 M), and gave me another error
message and asked me to edit the partition. But the screen it gave me
for editing the partition only allowed me to edit the name of the
partition, and not the size. I had to go back through the screens
until I reached the point where I had specified the 127 M size. I
tried a slightly smaller size, but Redhat insisted on changing that to
133 M allocated, and then complained again about the swap partition
being to big. As I recall, I found no way out of this but to
reboot and start over.
Some Redhat features do not seem to be documented. There is what
appears to be a nice system in place for bringing devices and services
up and down, via little files in a /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
directory. But there are no manuals. After spending a while reading a
lot of scripts and trying to figure out the logic I found it easier to
add my setup lines (to bring up an Ethernet interface) into
/etc/rc.local rather than waste more time reverse engineering the
system. I think Redhat's intention is that users rely on their custom
setup program which requires X-Windows to run. If you are not running
X-Windows you are essentially SOL.
Building a custom kernel was a bit tricky. There is a 'make boot' which
will make a new kernel, but no 'make install'. There is no standard
automatic procedure supplied to save the old kernel and install a new
one. I had to read through quite a bit of documentation to figure out
how to install a new kernel. This involved also reading about two other
programs (mkinitrd and lilo) and figuring out the syntax of lilo's
config file. I also had to figure out by trial and error that the RAM
filesystem must be compiled into the kernel, and not demand-loaded,
because the boot process requires it to be already present. This was
not clear from the manuals.
And oh, even though I paid $49.95 for the Redhat box, it was missing the
boot and supplemental floppies -- and sa...@redhat.com confirmed that
that's how it's shipped, if you buy the box distributed by McMillan
Publishing. (Thus the contents of the box do not match the instructions
in the enclosed manual, and that's apparently deliberate.) The manual
asked me to look at http://www.redhat.com/errata/ for any updated disk
images, but I found none there. I bought the $49.95 box because I was
hoping it would offer me a streamlined procedure and let me install the
OS quickly. Instead I ended up on a wild goose chase of missing
floppies, flaky install programs, and nonexistent documentation. In
retrospect, I would probably have done better to have just ftp'd files
across the Internet for free.
Now that Linux is up, it works fine. :-)
--
Rahul Dhesi <dh...@spams.r.us.com>
Chris
Rahul Dhesi <c.c....@21.usenet.us.com> spewed
[redhat linux woes]
I actually found the FreeBSD install/kernel configuration to be far
more confusing than the most linux setups. I did a FreeBSD net install,
and half of the time I tried to install ( it took 4 times for it to work
solidly ), I would set my netcard to the right port and IRQ, but it would
time out, and not be able to get packages. Also, if you sepecified the
visual kernel configuration tool at boot, it would also hang. At first
I thought it was just my machine, but I have confirmed it on two others
as well. I do like the BSD ports system and the CVS utilities to get
the latest source ( I think that it is just infinitely cool ).
I found the BSD kernel config to be a bit confusing the first time due to
the layout of the config file, and having to constantly refer to the
handbook or LINT to find out what I needed to do. A real plus on the
linux side is make menuconfig or make xconfig for the kernel options
file. It also has integrated help.
I don't think Redhat's target audience is the FBSD group. From what
I can tell here, people are technically skilled, and willing to
look things up. Redhat's target audience is sysadmins with lots
of linux machines to run ( and keep synced up with rpm's ), users
who want just an X interface, or people that want to say they have linux
just to say they have it. FWIW, slackware and debian have console based
install programs.
Also, to address the original post, I have used Linux for multiple years,
and have recently switched over to FreeBSD. I found that linux got
boring after a while because it ran too well ( after I got it configured
the way I liked ). Switching to FreeBSD allows me to learn a whole
new idea set and have fun finding out what the differences are.
Even though the original post may have been a troll, I think it was
a valid question. I've always viewed BSD as more like "Unix for Real Men,"
rather than k-mart. It always seemed more austere and foreboding than
linux. Dunno, I guess I am just strange. That, and the little
demon guy is just really cool!
Chris
--
The most certain way of insuring victory is to march briskly and in good
order against the enemy, always endeavouring to gain ground.
Frederick the Great
Leslie Mikesell
In article <6ece63$oc2$1...@samba.rahul.net>,
Rahul Dhesi <c.c....@21.usenet.us.com> wrote:
>Some Redhat features do not seem to be documented. There is what
>appears to be a nice system in place for bringing devices and services
>up and down, via little files in a /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
>directory. But there are no manuals. After spending a while reading a
>lot of scripts and trying to figure out the logic I found it easier to
>add my setup lines (to bring up an Ethernet interface) into
>/etc/rc.local rather than waste more time reverse engineering the
>system. I think Redhat's intention is that users rely on their custom
>setup program which requires X-Windows to run. If you are not running
>X-Windows you are essentially SOL.
Of course if you have *any* machine with X working you can run
'control-panel' from there to configure the network and it is
easy enough that you don't need a manual. But, I agree that
the scripts should be documented - they are usable from the command
line but you don't want to type the whole thing every time.
>Building a custom kernel was a bit tricky. There is a 'make boot' which
>will make a new kernel, but no 'make install'. There is no standard
>automatic procedure supplied to save the old kernel and install a new
>one. I had to read through quite a bit of documentation to figure out
>how to install a new kernel. This involved also reading about two other
>programs (mkinitrd and lilo) and figuring out the syntax of lilo's
>config file. I also had to figure out by trial and error that the RAM
>filesystem must be compiled into the kernel, and not demand-loaded,
>because the boot process requires it to be already present. This was
>not clear from the manuals.
If you have X up, 'make xconfig' is very nice. 'Make menuconfig' is
a close second if you don't. I think they are both much easier than
what you have to do to customize freebsd. As for lilo and installing
the new kernel, I normally compile a non-modular kernal and thus don't
need the initrd to boot. I just rename the lilo section for redhat's
installed kernal in /boot and add a new section above for my new
one (making it the default) with the normal /vmlinuz location (normal
for everyone but redhat). Then 'make zlilo' will do the install and
if you do something silly like omitting your disk driver or filesystem
you can still boot the old one from the lilo prompt.
Les Mikesell
l...@mcs.com
James Raynard
marino....@siemens.at wrote:
>vi...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) writes:
>
>> PS: Explanation for FreeBSD folks (especially for newbies): Albert is our
>> local kook (our == Linux folks).
I don't know if it's just my warped sense of humour, but I always find
his posts hilariously funny. I can imagine Linux people tearing their
hair out, though - they really don't deserve the bad image he gives them.
>Is he a real person at all, or a new version of "Jesus Munroy, Jr." perl
>script which[1] did the *BSD folks a great disservice in the olden days of
>1993?
My theory is that someone's Emacs crashed on a very early version of Linux
while reading alt.flame and the resulting unholy combination of Elisp and
Minix code somehow managed to bootstrap itself and take on an independent
existence.
James :-)
Giao Nguyen
Chris <ch...@angband.org> wrote:
> I found the BSD kernel config to be a bit confusing the first time due to
> the layout of the config file, and having to constantly refer to the
> handbook or LINT to find out what I needed to do. A real plus on the
> linux side is make menuconfig or make xconfig for the kernel options
> file. It also has integrated help.
This is not a big problem. If someone write such a utility for FreeBSD
it would not be too hard of a problem. The tradeoff here is that BSD
based systems can pass around a config file that makes sure a set of
kernels end up the same. This is great for a lab environment.
I think I just signed myself up for the config utility ....
Giao
Gardner Buchanan
In article <6ebd35$aus$1...@info.cs.uofs.edu>,
bi...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
> Oh, one more thing to think about. How many times have people gone to
> the trouble of porting the UNIX environment to foreign OSes?? Eunice
> for VMS. PRIMIX for Primos. Software Tools (from Ga. Tech I think) for
> UNIVAC Exec8. Or MKS for that matter. Ever see anyone port VMS or MVS
> or CTS work alike systems to UNIX?? I didn't think so.
>
There was a VMS-alike for some other boxes in the early eighties.
There have also been EDT-alikes for UNIX systems. Seems to me there
is still DEC FORTRAN-alike available for UNIX and other boxes.
`Course you can do CICS on AIX too, not that any of this proves
anything.
VMS and UNIX are clearly different. In that one or the other is
better for this or that has hardly anything to do with the shell
commands I think.
============================================================
Gardner Buchanan <gbuc...@rogers.wave.ca>
Ottawa, ON FreeBSD: Where you want to go. Today.
Stephen E. Halpin
On 13 Mar 1998 13:41:57 GMT, bi...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
<<lots of stuff deleted>>
>Oh, one more thing to think about. How many times have people gone to
>the trouble of porting the UNIX environment to foreign OSes?? Eunice
>for VMS. PRIMIX for Primos. Software Tools (from Ga. Tech I think) for
>UNIVAC Exec8. Or MKS for that matter. Ever see anyone port VMS or MVS
>or CTS work alike systems to UNIX?? I didn't think so.
WRT to VMS, it might have something to do with the fact that its easy
to implement one of 100 broken synchronous APIs on a robust
asynchronous API than it is to implement a robust asynchronous API
on 100 broken synchronous APIs. What do you mean you cant poll
on a semaphore and a stream in System VR4? Or that you cant poll
on a stream and a terminal in System VR3? Or that you cant poll
at all on System VR2 or earlier? Even basic system calls such as
"read" and "write" do not behave consistently from one *NIX to the
next, and in a distributed environment you cant even rely on something
as simple as file locks with NFS. Move up into the mainframe world
and start asking about scheduling, checkpointing, security, resource
management, etc... Its a lot to emulate for no real gain.
UNIX has a broader set of utilities for the average hacker, but the
average bank implementing a distributed VMScluster to do accounting
on a 365x24 basis is not going to build that infrastructure on awk and
sed, nor are they going to purchase an emulation environment to layer
their VMS software on. Look up the ladder at IBM which is doing the
better part of $80B/yr, a significant portion of which is in mainframe
technologies for markets which need the kinds of features that *NIX
on the whole just doesnt provide.
>Just some food for thought.
>
>bill
>
>--
>Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
>bi...@cs.uofs.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
>University of Scranton |
>Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
-Steve
Rahul Dhesi
>Of course if you have *any* machine with X working you can run
>'control-panel' from there to configure the network and it is
>easy enough that you don't need a manual. But, I agree that
>the scripts should be documented - they are usable from the command
>line but you don't want to type the whole thing every time.
In my specific situation this was not an easy option, even if I had
wanted to use it. Recall that I was trying to figure out where to add
the lines to bring a network interface up. So using a remote display
via Ethernet was not likely to work. :-) It would have taken too long
to locally install X-windows.
>If you have X up, 'make xconfig' is very nice. 'Make menuconfig' is
>a close second if you don't. I think they are both much easier than
>what you have to do to customize freebsd.
The first time, maybe. But when you are going through multiple
iterations trying to find a combination of options that will let the
boot complete, it helps a lot to be able to use RCS to keep track of
what you just changed. So long as I'm doing that, I might as well get
familiar with how to edit the files directly.
In my case, there were two problems that it took me several hours to
solve, and nothing I found in the documentation on the Internet was
helpful.
1. I was trying to demand-load the ramdisk filesystem, but it was
required by the boot disk to be built into the kernel.
2. I had not only compiled the scsi driver into the kernel, but I was
also specifiying 'initrd=/boot/initrd-2.0.31.img' in lilo.conf, and thus
causing the scsi driver to be to be dynamically loaded too. Apparently
I ended up with two instances of the driver, and the final result was a
kernel panic. (This is probably a bug -- a loadable driver ought to be
able to figure out that it's already compiled in.)
I finally figured out the problems by an exhaustive and exhausting
search.
--
Rahul Dhesi <dh...@spams.r.us.com>
Dana Booth
In article <JHISXAAd...@brig.demon.co.uk>,
Peter Adams <Pe...@brig.demon.co.uk> writes:
> So yes, I would also like to know from you experienced people whether I
> am backing the right horse, or should consider Linux.
Consider both... If you have room on your HD, or have an old one lying
around with nothing to do, install Linux. Both Linux and FreeBSD come with
boot managers that'll allow you to choose from multiple OS's. Personally, I
use OS/2's boot manager to choose from between four, (95, OS/2, Linux, FBSD)
and I've been very happy with the setup. It's allowed me to compare between
like OS's (Linux and FBSD) and influenced my decision to choose Linux as my
company's firewall.
--
-----------------------------
Dana Booth <da...@dana.oz.net>
-----------------------------
Ken Deboy
Robert D. Keys wrote:
-- snip --
> The one thing that sells me on FreeBSD is the install. Linux has
> a lot to learn yet, on installs, but it is getting there.
>
What version of Linux is hard to install? I haven't tried all the
flavors, but Redhat 4.0 is a no-brainer, and the current "stable"
debian is almost as easy to install.
> The other thing that sells me on FreeBSD are the autobuilding ports.
> Sources are fetched from anywhere in the world and built fresh.
> It works essentially every time, and makes me feel better about
> having the sources around in the machine's archive directories.
> Linux has a lot to learn yet on that sort of feature, but it is
>
-- snip --
A good point, and exactly the reason my next machine is going to
run FreeBSD. I'll keep my Linux box though:)
-- snip --
> apps from here and there. Linux gets more press which is interesting
> and indicates we need to do more *BSD pr's'manship. FreeBSD has
> more consistency in the way it is put together. It is a bit like
> apples and oranges again.
>
Another good point. I wish Linux wouldn't change libraries more often
than most people change their underware.
-- snip --
> put together. Where I want a tiny system, I still prefer the old MCC > 1.0+ system (almost vaporware but it installs easily in a toy 386 box
My Debian installed from 5 or so disks that I downloaded. Of course it
has almost nothing (not even 'less'), but it _is_ small.
-- snip --
> NetBSD or Minix or Coherent or AIX or (lots of oldies but goodies)
> at home where I can play and a crash or two are expected now and then.
>
What is the diff between FreeBSD, NetBSD, and BSD 4.4? The local book-
store has a few good books on 4.4... would they apply to FreeBSD too?
BTW I'm glad you mentioned Minix. I like the book it comes with, it
teaches a lot more about C than most C programming books:)
Cheers,
Ken Deboy
tc
>This is a really dumb point. Who runs Linux or FreeBSD or WinNT doesn't
>matter. Everyone picks an OS for different reasons. If there was a
no it is not dumb !
I've asked the veery same question, and I wanted to hear all possible
answers, becasue it's the first time I'm working with Unix on a no-Sun
platform.
I would rather use something that is more stable, and I needed to hear
if from people using Linux and BSD !!
Tony
Alexander Viro
In article <350c7a2d....@nntp.best.com>, tc <news...@best.com> wrote:
>no it is not dumb !
>I've asked the veery same question, and I wanted to hear all possible
>answers, becasue it's the first time I'm working with Unix on a no-Sun
>platform.
Linux is more stable than FreeBSD
FreeBSD is more stable than Linux
They are equally stable
They are incomparable in general.
Don't take it as pun - you can really hear any of them. No
kidding.
>I would rather use something that is more stable, and I needed to hear
>if from people using Linux and BSD !!
Tony, both are pretty stable. Both have development (== less
stable) versions. They share a lot of software. You can make a system with
Linux kernel that will look like FreeBSD. You can make the reverse.
Take into account that stability depends on the hardware. No, I don't mean
flakey hardware - just that brand new one may be supported only in the
latest development kernel. If you have a brand new SCSI adapter - either
get a beta kernel, or wait until it will become stable enough. And card
supported in FreeBSD-current may be non-supported in Linux 2.1.89. Or
be supported in 2.0.33. If your hardware is common enough - both are
pretty good. If you have a bleeding-edge one - it depends and it changes
every week.
BTW, if you got accustomed to SunOS 4 - get FreeBSD or make a
BSD-like Linux system (matter of software & defaults choice). If you got
accustomed to Solaris - dunno. Linux isn't SysV. It got more SysVisms
than FreeBSD did, but it's actually a flavour in itself.
Al
>
>Tony
Albert D. Cahalan
tpor...@shell3.ba.best.com (Tony Porczyk) writes:
>> Which one is better? FreeBSD, or Linux?
>
> They're both excellent systems. I use FreeBSD at work because of
> consistency in releases and tech support.
Infoworld selected the Linux Community for the Best Technical Support Award.
If that isn't what you want, you can buy support contracts from
many places.
John S. Dyson
In article <vc7ra44...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu>,
community. I suspect that alot of the mags are responding to the
extreme advocacy of a certain pseudo-free software community, and are
successfully avoiding it, by placating it.
--
John | Never try to teach a pig to sing,
dy...@freebsd.org | it just makes you look stupid,
jdy...@nc.com | and it irritates the pig.
Jordan K. Hubbard
Frank Pawlak wrote:
> ... or he has a mojor psychiatric disorder that compeles him to
> return for more.
Bingo!
Hear that Albert? Time to get a good shrink! :)
Sean Harding
dannyman <dann...@arh0300.urh.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> "Right" horse? imho, FreeBSD is a lot easier for a newbie to administer, but
> doesn't deliver all the latest features as quick. I'd say Linux is for folks
> in between hard-core administrator types and newbies. I'd prolly be
I'm not sure I'd agree with your opinion (unless I have misinterpreted) that
Linux is better for "hard-core administrator" types than FreeBSD. Myself and
most of my real-live professional system administrator friends (I'm just
a student/freelance consultant, so I don't completely count) prefer FreeBSD
over Linux. That said, most of us also have at least one of each ;-)
Sean
--
"Believe me, the truth is we're not honest. Not the people that we dream."
--10,000 Maniacs, "Eden"
Sean Harding, shar...@oregon.uoregon.edu
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~sharding/
Molnar Ingo
>> The other thing that sells me on FreeBSD are the autobuilding ports.
>> Sources are fetched from anywhere in the world and built fresh.
>> It works essentially every time, and makes me feel better about
>> having the sources around in the machine's archive directories.
>> Linux has a lot to learn yet on that sort of feature, but it is
on Linux, just try eg:
rpm -i ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/updates/5.0/i386/perl-5.004-4.i386.rpm
you can --rebuild on the fly from an SRPM, etc.
-- mingo
Frank Pawlak
In article <3509126E...@freebsd.org>,
"Jordan K. Hubbard" <j...@FreeBSD.org> writes:
> Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
>
>> > This kind of thing is often asked, and sometimes gets bad karma.
>> > We probably need a generic unix faq that has valid and reasonable
>> > comparisons of all the different freebies in a level-headed and
>> > sane way.
>>
>> Sure, I'll write it.
>
> write such a FAQ would be like having David Duke write an endorsement
> for the United Negro College Fund.
>
Frank Pawlak
In article <350B6B7F.2D159D62@locked_and_loaded.reno.nv.us>,
Ken Deboy <glockr@locked_and_loaded.reno.nv.us> writes:
> Robert D. Keys wrote:
> -- snip --
>
>> The one thing that sells me on FreeBSD is the install. Linux has
>> a lot to learn yet, on installs, but it is getting there.
>>
> What version of Linux is hard to install? I haven't tried all the
> flavors, but Redhat 4.0 is a no-brainer, and the current "stable"
> debian is almost as easy to install.
Umh, are you on drugs? Dselect=fast, easy install? is that an oxymoron
or what?
>
>> The other thing that sells me on FreeBSD are the autobuilding ports.
>> Sources are fetched from anywhere in the world and built fresh.
>> It works essentially every time, and makes me feel better about
>> having the sources around in the machine's archive directories.
>> Linux has a lot to learn yet on that sort of feature, but it is
>>
Frank Pawlak
In article <6eaclp$k...@riemann.math.psu.edu>,
vi...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) writes:
>
> Albert! Who LARTed you this time? Why did I miss it? Please, be a good
> boy, shut up. At least here.
> Al
> PS: Explanation for FreeBSD folks (especially for newbies): Albert is our
> hard enough he disappears for a while from c.o.l.* and goes to troll other
> groups. But he returns to us. Always. And always it happens _too_ soon.
> He's responsible for long and nasty Linux vs. FreeBSD flamewar in
> December-January (along with several other, er, gentlemen). Please, for
> your and our sanity - don't take this idiot seriously.
Could you please clarify? How do you really feel about this guy? He
can't be too bad, afterall he has his own web page somewhere.
BTW, you can never find this clown on any of the Linux groups. With the
abuse that he gets on this group either his hide is as thick as the sole
on a shoe or he has a mojor psychiatric disorder that compeles him to
return for more.
Cheers,
Frank
Alexander Viro
In article <6eia00$i...@newsops.execpc.com>,
Frank Pawlak <fpa...@execpc.com> wrote:
>In article <6eaclp$k...@riemann.math.psu.edu>,
> vi...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) writes:
>>
>> Albert! Who LARTed you this time? Why did I miss it? Please, be a good
>> boy, shut up. At least here.
>> Al
>> PS: Explanation for FreeBSD folks (especially for newbies): Albert is our
>> local kook (our == Linux folks). Usually when somebody LARTs this moron
>> hard enough he disappears for a while from c.o.l.* and goes to troll other
>> groups. But he returns to us. Always. And always it happens _too_ soon.
>> He's responsible for long and nasty Linux vs. FreeBSD flamewar in
>> December-January (along with several other, er, gentlemen). Please, for
>> your and our sanity - don't take this idiot seriously.
>
>Could you please clarify? How do you really feel about this guy? He
a sarcasm?
>
>BTW, you can never find this clown on any of the Linux groups. With the
Really? Sorry, but you're wrong. Go to DejaNews and search for
~a acahalan@*.cs.uml.edu & ~g comp.os.linux.*
Or just look at c.o.l.d.* - he'll be there. Usually he's advocating
incompatibility wherever possible. For nice examples of paranoid rants
look for Albert's postings in the thread "FWD: Possible Bug in header
files in Red Hat 5.0" in c.o.l.d.s and its branch "LART without hope". Or
"RedHat 5 and GCC problems" - that's only looking for this year. I don't
want to quote it here - if you want to read this shit go to DejaNews and
enjoy.
>abuse that he gets on this group either his hide is as thick as the sole
>on a shoe or he has a mojor psychiatric disorder that compeles him to
>return for more.
It's "kook with agenda". Mix of both explanations.
>Cheers,
>Frank
Ditto,
Al
Joe Greco
In comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc article <6ebq1a$acb$2...@uni00nw.unity.ncsu.edu>, "Robert D. Keys" <rdk...@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> wrote:
:> That would depend on many things: IDE or SCSI, SMP or not?
:> Dejanews is running on SMP Linux. They used to run BSD, but it
:> crashed too much.
:
:I would like to know particulars. Be specific.
Actually, although it's been a while since the discussion in question,
I seem to recall the reason being "Linux had a more mature SMP". I
don't recall any talk of instability.
I could be remembering wrong though.
As far as I know, my boxes are the highest ranked FreeBSD and Diablo
news transit servers in the world. I feel very comfortable with the
stability of FreeBSD.
... JG
Joe Greco
In comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc article <6eh51b$8...@enews3.newsguy.com>, ro...@dyson.iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote:
:> Infoworld selected the Linux Community for the Best Technical Support Award.
:>
:> If that isn't what you want, you can buy support contracts from
:> many places.
:>
:And if you want facts, look at the actual experiences in the FreeBSD
:community. I suspect that alot of the mags are responding to the
:extreme advocacy of a certain pseudo-free software community, and are
:successfully avoiding it, by placating it.
John Dyson, FreeBSD's very own wonderguy. Well, at least, one of them.
The actual experiences I have, just relating to John Dyson, far exceed
the total support I've received from companies such as Sun.
It's freaky to shoot off an e-mail, drive home, and have a reply waiting
with an explanation, and a patch to help with my problem. That's just
not the kind of support that you get from most places.
Or... asking for a feature and having it show up in a day or two in
-current.
This isn't just true of John... it's just that most of the things I do
and need tend towards his area of specialization.
... JG
Rainer M Duffner
In article <6ecfju$6...@smash.gatech.edu>, Chris
<URL:mailto:ch...@angband.org> wrote:
> Rahul Dhesi <c.c....@21.usenet.us.com> spewed
> [redhat linux woes]
>
> I actually found the FreeBSD install/kernel configuration to be far
> more confusing than the most linux setups. I did a FreeBSD net install,
> and half of the time I tried to install ( it took 4 times for it to work
> solidly ), I would set my netcard to the right port and IRQ, but it would
> time out, and not be able to get packages. Also, if you sepecified the
> visual kernel configuration tool at boot, it would also hang.
Strange enough, I found the process of generating my own kernel
amazingly painless.
It worked first time, first try.
OK, I followed the instructions in the handbook very strictly, but given
the amount of work and compiling that is done in background it is really
cool.
Also, make world after cvsup worked with no problems.
Perhaps it's my hardware ? (SCSI, old gfx-card)
> I found the BSD kernel config to be a bit confusing the first time due to
> the layout of the config file, and having to constantly refer to the
> handbook or LINT to find out what I needed to do.
Yes, admittedly. Nothing for people with manual-aversion.
But how often do you rebuild your kernel ?
cheers,
Rainer
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|Rainer Duffner, E-Mail: duf...@fh-konstanz.de |
| & Rainer....@konstanz.netsurf.de |
|Fachhochschule Konstanz, Germany |
|"What's a Network ?" - Bill Gates, early 1980s |
| WWW:http://www-stud.fh-konstanz.de/~duffner |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Russell L. Carter
In article <6eirj3$7...@newsops.execpc.com>,
I absolutely agree... and add in SCSI drivers here... I've fired off
q's on Friday night and got a message with an answer or a patch to
try when I checked my mail early Sat. YIKES! Eery is one of the
feelings, and a lot of gratitude is another.
But everybody knows this already, right? A support contract might
get you something, maybe, if you're lucky... But most of the
time you're not lucky.
Thanks guys!
Russell
>... JG
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rlcarter __ __ ____ ___ ___ ____
rlca...@primenet.com /__)/__) / / / / /_ /\ / /_ /
/ / \ / / / / /__ / \/ /___ /
nx...@skylink.net
vi...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) wrote: > Albert! Who LARTed you this
time? Why did I miss it? Please, be a good > boy, shut up. At least here. A
seems to do nothing but stir up stdcrap.h wherever he goes. --
nx...@skylink.net SNMP - A simple solution for simple lusers
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
Frank Pawlak
In article <6eig3n$o...@riemann.math.psu.edu>,
vi...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) writes:
> In article <6eia00$i...@newsops.execpc.com>,
> Frank Pawlak <fpa...@execpc.com> wrote:
>>In article <6eaclp$k...@riemann.math.psu.edu>,
>> vi...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) writes:
>>>
>>> boy, shut up. At least here.
>>> PS: Explanation for FreeBSD folks (especially for newbies): Albert is our
>>> local kook (our == Linux folks). Usually when somebody LARTs this moron
>>> hard enough he disappears for a while from c.o.l.* and goes to troll other
>>> groups. But he returns to us. Always. And always it happens _too_ soon.
>>> He's responsible for long and nasty Linux vs. FreeBSD flamewar in
>>> December-January (along with several other, er, gentlemen). Please, for
>>> your and our sanity - don't take this idiot seriously.
>>
>>Could you please clarify? How do you really feel about this guy? He
> He could be funny if he wouldn't be so boring.
>>can't be too bad, afterall he has his own web page somewhere.
> Eh? Excuse me, but Spamford also has a webpage, so what? Or was it
> a sarcasm?
Yes it was sarcasm. But perhaps I was being to hard on him, he is just a
college junior. He must be a pretty tough kid to take all of the abuse
that he gets
>>
>>BTW, you can never find this clown on any of the Linux groups. With the
> Really? Sorry, but you're wrong. Go to DejaNews and search for
> ~a acahalan@*.cs.uml.edu & ~g comp.os.linux.*
> Or just look at c.o.l.d.* - he'll be there. Usually he's advocating
> incompatibility wherever possible. For nice examples of paranoid rants
> look for Albert's postings in the thread "FWD: Possible Bug in header
> files in Red Hat 5.0" in c.o.l.d.s and its branch "LART without hope". Or
> "RedHat 5 and GCC problems" - that's only looking for this year. I don't
> want to quote it here - if you want to read this shit go to DejaNews and
> enjoy.
>
>>abuse that he gets on this group either his hide is as thick as the sole
>>on a shoe or he has a mojor psychiatric disorder that compeles him to
>>return for more.
> It's "kook with agenda". Mix of both explanations.
Albert, how do you manage to absorb all of theis abuse and keep on gomming
for more?
Cheers,
Frank
>
> Ditto,
> Al
>
>
Albert D. Cahalan
fpa...@execpc.com (Frank Pawlak) writes:
> Albert, how do you manage to absorb all of theis abuse and
> keep on gomming for more?
I figure that somebody needs to argue against all the lies here.
The abuse I get is a great motivation for Linux software development.
Jordan K. Hubbard
Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
>
> fpa...@execpc.com (Frank Pawlak) writes:
>
> > Albert, how do you manage to absorb all of theis abuse and
> > keep on gomming for more?
>
> I figure that somebody needs to argue against all the lies here.
That's pretty rich, Albert, since so many of the lies you see people
getting annoyed at in this newsgroup are YOURS. Is this like the
fireman who goes around setting fires so he'll have more work?
> The abuse I get is a great motivation for Linux software development.
Pity I've never seen you actually do anything substantive to back that
statement up. I presume you meant to add "in my mind" to the end of
that sentence? :-)
Leslie Mikesell
In article <6ee474$52u$1...@samba.rahul.net>,
Rahul Dhesi <c.c....@21.usenet.us.com> wrote:
>In <6ed5t2$5n0$1...@Venus.mcs.net> l...@MCS.COM (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>
>>Of course if you have *any* machine with X working you can run
>>'control-panel' from there to configure the network and it is
>>easy enough that you don't need a manual. But, I agree that
>>the scripts should be documented - they are usable from the command
>>line but you don't want to type the whole thing every time.
>
>In my specific situation this was not an easy option, even if I had
>wanted to use it. Recall that I was trying to figure out where to add
>the lines to bring a network interface up. So using a remote display
>via Ethernet was not likely to work. :-) It would have taken too long
>to locally install X-windows.
I've always added the first network interface in the install
dialogs, but then I normally install via NFS...
>>If you have X up, 'make xconfig' is very nice. 'Make menuconfig' is
>>a close second if you don't. I think they are both much easier than
>>what you have to do to customize freebsd.
>
>The first time, maybe. But when you are going through multiple
>iterations trying to find a combination of options that will let the
>boot complete, it helps a lot to be able to use RCS to keep track of
>what you just changed. So long as I'm doing that, I might as well get
>familiar with how to edit the files directly.
You can always diff .config against another copy, but 'make xconfig'
is nicely laid out, grouping the related choices together and
activating additional choices when certain selections are made.
>In my case, there were two problems that it took me several hours to
>solve, and nothing I found in the documentation on the Internet was
>helpful.
>
>1. I was trying to demand-load the ramdisk filesystem, but it was
>required by the boot disk to be built into the kernel.
>
>2. I had not only compiled the scsi driver into the kernel, but I was
>also specifiying 'initrd=/boot/initrd-2.0.31.img' in lilo.conf, and thus
>causing the scsi driver to be to be dynamically loaded too. Apparently
>I ended up with two instances of the driver, and the final result was a
>kernel panic. (This is probably a bug -- a loadable driver ought to be
>able to figure out that it's already compiled in.)
>
>I finally figured out the problems by an exhaustive and exhausting
>search.
This is the main reason I scrap the modules and kerneld and
build a kernel with the parts I need. Call me old-fashioned...
Les Mikesell
l...@mcs.com
Jordan K. Hubbard
Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
> Actually, yesterday was enough inspiration for a new alpha release
> of my standards-compliant /bin/ps. I'm even supporting most of your
> obsolete BSD syntax, such as "ps t". That is _simultaneous_ support,
> and I threw in some AIX features for good measure.
>
> So, do you plan to remain incompatible with standard unix systems?
> Your init scripts are non-standard too, aren't they?
I assume by "standard" you mean "not like the Linux system I'm used to",
which is of course the purest garbage.
State the _precise_ POSIX, XPG4 or even SPEC 1170 (just to grant you the
greatest possible latitude) mandate that we're incompatable with and
I'll give you full marks. Tell me "well, it ain't like my Linux or SVR4
system and that's what's standard to *me*" and I'll simply laugh at you
since it's the same kind of Ford vs Chevy argument we've been hearing
since the 50's. There are standards and there are standards, and nobody
here has any desire to turn BSD into SVR4 or Linux (*shudder*) so just
forget it if that's your desire. If, on the other hand, you can point
out a stipulation from one of the more formalized Unix standards like
POSIX that FreeBSD is incompatable with then we're quite willing to
listen.
Alexander Viro
In article <350F3330...@FreeBSD.org>,
Jordan K. Hubbard <j...@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
>
>> Actually, yesterday was enough inspiration for a new alpha release
>> of my standards-compliant /bin/ps. I'm even supporting most of your
>> obsolete BSD syntax, such as "ps t". That is _simultaneous_ support,
>> and I threw in some AIX features for good measure.
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Albert, you outperformed yourself! Yes, your "new" release is called
procps-980317.tgz. BUT the latest date on files there is Feb 14. Sometime
ago it was called procps-980221.tgz. What a pathetic luser! Albert, dear,
tell me what: was it the matter of mv or did you really bother with tar?
So, let me get it straight: yesterday flame inspired you to
repackage/rename your month-old alpha patch to ps and proudly announce it
as new release? Considering that you invited me to look at it back in the
end of February and knew that I'm in this thread, should I take it as the
flame bait? You are either an unbelievable idiot or the most unusual
masochist I ever seen.
>>
>> So, do you plan to remain incompatible with standard unix systems?
>> Your init scripts are non-standard too, aren't they?
Albert, two quick questiones: a) who uses ps in init scripts?
b) do you know that there are 2 flavours of init? With _different_
semantics. Hint: immutable flag. They are _different_ beasts.
>
>I assume by "standard" you mean "not like the Linux system I'm used to",
>which is of course the purest garbage.
>
>State the _precise_ POSIX, XPG4 or even SPEC 1170 (just to grant you the
>greatest possible latitude) mandate that we're incompatable with and
>I'll give you full marks. Tell me "well, it ain't like my Linux or SVR4
>system and that's what's standard to *me*" and I'll simply laugh at you
>since it's the same kind of Ford vs Chevy argument we've been hearing
>since the 50's. There are standards and there are standards, and nobody
>here has any desire to turn BSD into SVR4 or Linux (*shudder*) so just
>forget it if that's your desire. If, on the other hand, you can point
>out a stipulation from one of the more formalized Unix standards like
>POSIX that FreeBSD is incompatable with then we're quite willing to
>listen.
Jordan, FYI: there are both SysV-like and BSD-like inits for
Linux (except immutable stuff). So that's pure matter of personal
preferences (surprise, surprise). BTW, if you'll press Albert hard enough
he'll probably admit that he doesn't know a shit about both styles. Eh,
Albert? If you prefer SysV-style init would you mind to answer several
_simple_ questions?
The bottom line: that was the end of last remnants of Albert's
credibility.
Cheers,
Al
PS: Sorry for over-the-head reply, but Albert's article didn't appear on
my newsfeed yet.
PPS: For those who think that I got my claims about Albert's "new release"
from the thin air I recommend to take a look on the articles
<vc7iuq7...@saturn.cs.uml.edu> and <vc7yayx...@saturn.cs.uml.edu>.
See also http://www.cs.uml.edu/~acahalan/linux/procps-980317.tgz
nx...@skylink.net
acah...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu (Albert D. Cahalan) wrote: > I figure that
somebody needs to argue against all the lies here. And what lies are we
talking about here? It's pretty difficult to propagate lies when you have
the source code in front of you to examine. > The abuse I get is a great
motivation for Linux software development. What motivation for Linux
software development? A seasoned OS programmer will not buy into propaganda
such as yours since they will examine the code and its operation and draw
their own conclusions. The only one who'd buy your BS would be someone who
falls under the classification of pure ignorance. I'm only concerned with
what works well and has a standardization of development. Linux has no
standardization. Makes for a nightmare in a production environment. This
has been my gripe against Linux since day one. -- nx...@skylink.net
nx...@skylink.net
acah...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu (Albert D. Cahalan) wrote: > Actually, yesterday
was enough inspiration for a new alpha release > of my standards-compliant
/bin/ps. I'm even supporting most of your > obsolete BSD syntax, such as "ps
t". That is _simultaneous_ support, > and I threw in some AIX features for
are grounds for being committed by the state. The only feature I have seen
that was of use in AIX was the ability to expand filesystems while the system
is running and in production. > So, do you plan to remain incompatible with
standard unix systems? So you consider AIX features to be a standard? Oh, I
can't wait to see the Albert D. Cahalan smit port for Linux. If you need a
name to keep IBM off your back for copyright infringement, might I suggest
the name twit? After all, it does fit the author. > Your init scripts are
non-standard too, aren't they? Seem pretty standard to me. Similiar to
SunOS 4.x if not identical. Standard /etc/rc scripts. There is a little bit
of a license of creativity for various flavors of Unix for where certain
config files live. -- nx...@skylink.net
Josef Moellers
nx...@skylink.net wrote:
> A
> shame he's not a luser on my network otherwise I would LART
> him daily. He
> seems to do nothing but stir up stdcrap.h wherever
> he goes.
> --
> nx...@skylink.net
I'm not sure if dejanews will still show them up, but about a year ago,
a guy called Scott Nudds from Hamilton, Canada completely stunned the
comp.lang.asm.x86 newsgroup by posting controversial statements ("We
will never see gigabytes of RAM in PCs", "C is crap, assembler is THE
language", "You cannot write portable software in C", and "UNIX is dying
and this is a good thing", although he did not have a single shred of
evidence, just personal opinion) and insulting people during the debate,
calling them "C pushers", "demented", "liar" and the like. He really had
a style that dragged you into the debate. One of his main techniques was
to post a statement and later define the words he used, like "portable
means 100% portable ONLY, not a single line must be changed", his
"assembler" was to be an assembler for a virtual machine like JAS.
Another technique was to insist that he was to be taken literally, so a
PC with one gigabyte of memory just wouldn't count, it hat to be
"gigabyteS" (i.e. at least two), and it had to be (industry standard)
PCs, not any other kind of workstation.
As a consequence, c.l.a.x is now a moderated newsgroup.
Scott now posting the same crap in sci.environment and related
newsgroups.
I don't hope that Albert is YASN.
--
Josef Moellers molle...@sni.de
PS Dieser Artikel enthaelt einzig und allein meine persoenlichen
Ansichten!
PS This article contains my own, personal opinion only!
Alexander Viro
In article <vc7wwdt...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu>,
Albert D. Cahalan <acah...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu> wrote:
>fpa...@execpc.com (Frank Pawlak) writes:
>
>> Albert, how do you manage to absorb all of theis abuse and
>> keep on gomming for more?
>
Yes, it's very amusing and satisfying :-)
Al
Michael Hancock
Molnar Ingo wrote:
>
> >> The other thing that sells me on FreeBSD are the autobuilding ports.
> >> Sources are fetched from anywhere in the world and built fresh.
> >> It works essentially every time, and makes me feel better about
> >> having the sources around in the machine's archive directories.
> >> Linux has a lot to learn yet on that sort of feature, but it is
>
>
> rpm -i ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/updates/5.0/i386/perl-5.004-4.i386.rpm
On FreeBSD, do either:
cd /usr/ports/lang/perl5
make (fetches from the source, unpacks, patches, and builds it)
make install
make clean
You can even make the package if you want.
... or if you like typing in long URLs:
pkg_add
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/packages/perl5/perl-5.00404.tgz
Alexander Viro
Ahem... Sorry, but your postings are somewhat, er, hard to read. Please,
change your config, OK?
Sample:
>t". That is _simultaneous_ support,
> and I threw in some AIX features for
>good measure.
AIX features and good measure being used in the same
sentence
>are grounds for being committed by the state.
The only feature I have seen
Looks like it spits ^M's instead of normal linefeeds...
Zenin
[posted & mailed]
nx...@skylink.net wrote:
>snip lots of unreadable crap<
Get a real news feed and news reader, or yell at DejaNews to get
there shit together. Your post was completely unreadable...
--
-Zenin
ze...@archive.rhps.org
Rahul Dhesi
>I've always added the first network interface in the install
>dialogs, but then I normally install via NFS...
Which reminds me of another problem I encountered. During the initial
install my Ehternet card (an SMC Ultra) was apparently not recognized.
I saw a menu asking me to pick from one of several possible Ethernet
cards, none of them being the one I was using. I looked quite hard for
some guidance in the Redhat user manual as well as on the Internet, and
still could not figure out which one of the listed cards to pick. So I
tried them all, one by one, and each choice resulted in a screen telling
me my Ethernet card was not recognized.
The fact that the SMC Ultra was not recognized turned out to be not a
Linux problem -- the machine's BIOS was a Plug-and-Play BIOS which was
hiding the ISA bus interrupts. I eventually figured this out, changed
the settings, and was then able to configure the driver into the kernel.
But the fact that I was given a screenful of choices, all wrong and none
documented, was not a Good Thing.
So far, Redhat Linux's greatest failing is fragmented documentation.
Most questions that I have had so far are answered in some place, but
(a) almost none of them are answered in the Redhat user manual, which
sort of defeats the purpose of having a commercially supported Linux,
and (b) it takes quite a bit of searching to find the answers in the
various HOTWO's and FAQs, and these HOWTOs and FAQs are *NOT* available
for browsing during the Redhat Linux install process, despite there
being two CD-ROM disks in the distribution. In fact the user manual
does not even tell the user which CD-ROM contains what.
Since I am an experienced UNIX user I was able to solve all problems and
complete the install after about three man-days of effort. The typical
home user would have given up quite quickly and gone back to Microsoft.
--
Rahul Dhesi <dh...@spams.r.us.com>
Robert W Current
In article <6ece63$oc2$1...@samba.rahul.net> pounded on his keys and said:
: I just finished installing Redhat Linux 5.0 on an Intel architecture
: machine.
: --
: Rahul Dhesi <dh...@spams.r.us.com>
That was a nice long evaluation of ONE LINUX distribution. I don't think
Red Hat _is_ LINUX though. Red Hat was my first free UNIX, and I am in no
rush to go back to it. Currently I run my LINUX box on a SuSE based
installation, which I found to be much more plesant, and significantly
diffrent.
Honestly, the whole FreeBSD vs. LINUX thing makes me sick. Who cares?
You have choices, that is what really matters :) I find most of the "old
school" free UNIX guys I talk to still think FreeBSD makes the best server
because they think it's more secure and bullet-proof, and LINUX is a
better Workstation because of the wider application base. I can think of
a couple hundred reasons that isn't true, but I suppose there could still
be something to it.
I personally like LINUX because of the "open-ness" of the development
team, and my ability to build systems out of obscure hardware that I
find for bargian prices. But, when it comes down to it, I think what is
really important is to brake free of M$ for a superior product. I am
still waiting for a decent application base and smoother installation
processes for the OS itself and software. Talking friends and coworkers
into switching is always hampered completely by those two issues.
--
"Complete Idiots Guide to Running LINUX Unleashed in a Nutshell for Dumbies"
What a book!
Robert Wesley Current Jr.
http://cgsa.chem.und.nodak.edu/~current/
cur...@plains.nodak.edu n,
University of North Dakota _/ | _
Department of Chemistry /' `'/
Office Phone (701)777-2541 <~ .'
ACS, AAAS, NDAS .' |
_/ |
_/ `.`.
_______/ ' \__ | |______
##################_/ (|___/ /__\ \ \ \___.#######################
#################/ \___.'\_______)\_|_| \#######################
################|\ -----\#################
################| \____________________________________/|#################
###############/ | |#################
Alexander Viro
In article <vc7k99s...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu>,>vi...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) writes:
[snip]
>> MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
>> Albert, you outperformed yourself! Yes, your "new" release is called
>> procps-980317.tgz. BUT the latest date on files there is Feb 14. Sometime
>> ago it was called procps-980221.tgz. What a pathetic luser! Albert, dear,
[snip]
>You think you are pretty smart. :-)
No. Just that you are incredibly stupid.
>
>My system clock is dead and I don't get network time updates.
man clock. If the problem is not CMOS-related - man crontab
>I only notice when I download a tarball with newer dates
>and "make" complains that some things might not get rebuilt.
>Why should I care? I can use /bin/touch to enforce compliance
>with my own severely offset timezone.
[snip]
> I'm _fixing_ software that isn't standard.
And use touch to enforce compilance with your broken
clock. Asking "why should I care". Should I say "hypocrisy"?
>
>>> State the _precise_ POSIX, XPG4 or even SPEC 1170 (just to grant
>>> you the greatest possible latitude) mandate that we're incompatable
>>> with and I'll give you full marks.
>
>Version 2 of the Single Unix Specification -- look it up yourself.
>
[snip]
>> Jordan, FYI: there are both SysV-like and BSD-like inits for Linux
>
>The BSD-like one is essentially dead. Only Slackware keeps it AFAIK.
Plus everybody who wants to keep it. Albert, init is pretty
separate part of system and it takes 15 minutes to replace one flavour
with another on any Linux installation I've ever seen.
>> BTW, if you'll press Albert hard enough he'll probably admit that
>> he doesn't know a shit about both styles. Eh, Albert? If you prefer
>> SysV-style init would you mind to answer several _simple_ questions?
>
>BSD init is junk because it is awkward for automatic software
>installation.
OK, so you gave your default answer. Nice. Now, tell me please
which names are hardwired into SysV init and BSD init resp. Then explain
what's the difference between them. _Then_ explain WTF choice of init
flavour affects easyness of automatic software installation. Hint: don't
mention upgrades of init itself unless you want to eat _very_ large crow.
[snip]
>albert$ date
>Sat Feb 14 18:02:59 EST 1998
>
>jupiter:acahalan$ date
>Wed Mar 18 05:30:24 EST 1998
>
>Gee, my clock is a tad slow. There isn't any reason to reset the
>clock either, because I don't have a stable reference clock here.
Just of curiosity, how long ago did it start? Albert, if you
want to lie, do it in less obvious ways, OK?
Al
Leslie Mikesell
In article <6eo40d$p6t$1...@samba.rahul.net>,
Rahul Dhesi <c.c....@21.usenet.us.com> wrote:
>In <6en103$kvi$1...@Jupiter.Mcs.Net> l...@MCS.COM (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>The fact that the SMC Ultra was not recognized turned out to be not a
>Linux problem -- the machine's BIOS was a Plug-and-Play BIOS which was
>hiding the ISA bus interrupts. I eventually figured this out, changed
>the settings, and was then able to configure the driver into the kernel.
>
>But the fact that I was given a screenful of choices, all wrong and none
>documented, was not a Good Thing.
This is a generic PC problem that will bite you on every machine
where the motherboard, cards, and OS do not agree on whether or
not to use PNP. Usually you need to run the vendor's setup disk
to turn off PNP on network cards and set the IRQ and I/O ports to
something reasonable. Plus, about every motherboard I've seen has
a different way to describe the resources used by ISA cards in the
CMOS setup.
>So far, Redhat Linux's greatest failing is fragmented documentation.
>Most questions that I have had so far are answered in some place, but
>(a) almost none of them are answered in the Redhat user manual, which
>sort of defeats the purpose of having a commercially supported Linux,
>and (b) it takes quite a bit of searching to find the answers in the
>various HOTWO's and FAQs, and these HOWTOs and FAQs are *NOT* available
>for browsing during the Redhat Linux install process, despite there
>being two CD-ROM disks in the distribution. In fact the user manual
>does not even tell the user which CD-ROM contains what.
Agreed, but I don't find *bsd any easier. You basically need another
machine on the internet so you can search for the answers to your
problems.
>Since I am an experienced UNIX user I was able to solve all problems and
>complete the install after about three man-days of effort. The typical
>home user would have given up quite quickly and gone back to Microsoft.
I suppose a typical home user wouldn't have an ethernet card in the
first place. But, I have done at least one RH 5.0 install where the
probes found everything automatically, and it is kind of neat how
you can put in the IP address and nameserver address in the first
dialog and it finds your machine name and domain for you.
Les Mikesell
l...@mcs.com
Jens Schweikhardt
Albert D. Cahalan <acah...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu> wrote:
[the usual trolls]
# Of course not. I'm _fixing_ software that isn't standard.
[...]
# My system clock is dead and I don't get network time updates.
How about fixing your hardware first? If you don't care for
stable hardware I don't want to run your software.
Regards,
Jens
--
Jens Schweikhardt http://www.shuttle.de/schweikh
SIGSIG -- signature too long (core dumped)
Franck Arnaud
Robert W Current:
> I personally like LINUX because of the "open-ness" of the development
> team, and my ability to build systems out of obscure hardware that I
> find for bargian prices.
Linux doesn't always work on old hardware. I came to FreeBSD because
Linux (at least the kernel in Debian 1.3.1 and another one I tried)
couldn't read the harddisk on my laptop... It's interesting to see the
differences between the two system in any case.
Frank Crary
In article <350B6B7F.2D159D62@locked_and_loaded.reno.nv.us>,
Ken Deboy <glockr@locked_and_loaded.reno.nv.us> wrote:
> What is the diff between FreeBSD, NetBSD, and BSD 4.4? The local book-
>store has a few good books on 4.4... would they apply to FreeBSD too?
They should. I'm sure someone will correct me if I get the details
wrong, so... BSD 4.4 (Berkeley Software Distribution version 4.4) is
a standard and generic version of Unix. It implies certain things
about, for example, which directories contain which files, not the
kernel handles configuration files, etc. FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
are all BSD 4.4 Unix. One major advantage of BSD 4.4 is that (unlike
earlier versions) it is untainted by proprietary software. To use
or distribute it, you don't have to worry about any licensing agreements
or fees (other than the BSD requirements to retain credit and disclaimers,
and I believe this is only true of BSD 4.4 Lite, which someone else
might have called BSD 4.4.1). But BSD 4.4 does not concern itself
with the details of exactly how a machine works. Things like device
drivers (and just about anything that depends on exactly which machine
is used) are beyond the scope of BSD 4.4. So FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
are different ways of implementing BSD 4.4 on different machines.
I'm not sure about the differences, but I believe FreeBSD is more
focused on making it work well in IBM PC-type machines, while the
others are more focused on making it work on a wide range of machines.
Frank Crary
CU Boulder
Albert D. Cahalan
vi...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) writes:
>> My system clock is dead and I don't get network time updates.
>
> man clock. If the problem is not CMOS-related - man crontab
I think it is the clock chip or crystal. I have to move the computer
often, so software solutions won't do the job very well. I'd have to
save a timestamp at shutdown, determine the downtime at boot (in some
strange unit like 0.83 seconds), and then adjust for what happened.
That would be a great deal of trouble for little gain. TCP/IP works
just fine, so why worry? You can't tell what time it is if you have
more than one clock. For me, the one clock is my watch.
Now, stop making fun of my motherboard! (or send money to fix it)
>> BSD init is junk because it is awkward for automatic software
>> installation.
>
> OK, so you gave your default answer. Nice. Now, tell me please
> which names are hardwired into SysV init and BSD init resp.
I really don't care, and I don't have a BSD init anymore.
Perhaps you object to where SysV init looks for files?
Deal. There needs to be a standard, and there is one.
> Then explain what's the difference between them.
Its simple: BSD sucks and SysV doesn't. Compatibility with most of
the world (SunOS 5, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare...) is rather nice,
don't you think? Your skills won't be very useful if they don't
work with mainstream commercial Unix systems.
> _Then_ explain WTF choice of init flavour affects easyness
> of automatic software installation.
Scripts to start new software can be just dropped in.
There is no need to edit anything by hand.
> Hint: don't mention upgrades of init itself unless you want
> to eat _very_ large crow.
Oh, how about init upgrades without a reboot? We just got that.
>> albert$ date
>> Sat Feb 14 18:02:59 EST 1998
>>
>> jupiter:acahalan$ date
>> Wed Mar 18 05:30:24 EST 1998
>>
>> Gee, my clock is a tad slow. There isn't any reason to reset the
>> clock either, because I don't have a stable reference clock here.
>
> Just of curiosity, how long ago did it start?
Last fall I was unable to compile something because "make" didn't
like the time stamps. I reset the hardware clock then and forgot
about the matter.
> Albert, if you
> want to lie, do it in less obvious ways, OK?
OK. :-)
If you ran "diff", it would show changes. Not that it would
matter to you of course.
Alexander Viro
In article <vc7n2ej...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu>,
>>> installation.
>>
>> OK, so you gave your default answer. Nice. Now, tell me please
>> which names are hardwired into SysV init and BSD init resp.
>
>I really don't care, and I don't have a BSD init anymore.
>Perhaps you object to where SysV init looks for files?
>Deal. There needs to be a standard, and there is one.
Translation: I don't know a shit about it, but I'll whine anyway.
>
>> Then explain what's the difference between them.
>
>Its simple: BSD sucks and SysV doesn't. Compatibility with most of
>the world (SunOS 5, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare...) is rather nice,
>don't you think? Your skills won't be very useful if they don't
>work with mainstream commercial Unix systems.
See above and below.
>
>> _Then_ explain WTF choice of init flavour affects easyness
>> of automatic software installation.
>
>Scripts to start new software can be just dropped in.
>There is no need to edit anything by hand.
a) Compare Debian and Solaris setups, please.
b) Ever heard about sed and configure?
c) How many software packages require changes in rc scripts?
d) Better yet, how many software packages require changes in
/etc/inittab, eh?
>
>> Hint: don't mention upgrades of init itself unless you want
>> to eat _very_ large crow.
>
>Oh, how about init upgrades without a reboot? We just got that.
Yes, dear. And how long ago did it happen? And who wrote the patch, BTW?
Care to explain the story to our audience? Probably not, so let me do it.
In a large and nasty flamewar with NT advocates somebody
mentioned that for complete libc upgrade one should shutdown the system,
'cause init still uses an old binary. Albert replied that one can add an
option to init that would make it exec() itself. OK, after such comment
one can think that Albert will go and do it. BZZZERT! That's Albert. He
didn't even bother to look at the init source.
At the same time he ignited the flamewar in c.o.l.development.system
re glibc is evil, for it makes people care about portability. His main
idea was that other OSes shouldn't benefit from development under Linux.
He was also paranoid about evil FSF. Overall it looked like Gary at his
worst. He was LARTed by many people, me included. At some point I wrote
that he never made a single posting that would contain a useful idea. Then
I recalled that actually he did.
I found his posting and looked at it. Well, I grabbed the latest
sysvinit to look whether it was already done. Nope. OK, let's see what
can be done here. The main problem is indeed passing the state across the
exec. Then I realized that if it would be done we'ld be able to upgrade
init on the fly (passing the state in ASCII form) and, what's more useful,
to do a non-destructive testing. Blind replacement of init and the
following reboot - somewhat scary.
OK, it was Friday evening. On Monday I had something working (more
or less). I posted the patch to c.o.l.d.s, asking to test it. On Friday I
posted the next version. Well, Miquel (maintainer of sysvinit) interested
in it and after several fixes it was incorporated into sysvinit-2.74.
That's it. Albert replied to the second announcement and after some
conversation he admitted that he didn't ever look at the init sources but
plans to do it someday. Guess that this day didn't come yet.
That's Albert. He can whine for months about a feature that should
be added, but never produces anything viable. After all somebody come and
does it. Albert, remember _how_ long did you whine about devfs? More than
year IIRC, right? Care to recall the userland monstrosity you proposed?
Where you were when it was done in decent way? Your feedback to the
discussion on linux-kernel was not too constructive (at the *very* least).
OK, Albert. You asked for it and you got it. If you can't live
without periodical spanking of your sorry ass - I can make a modified
Eliza for you. If you are not only masochist but an exibitionist too...
Sigh... Go to alt.flame and describe your situation - folks there will be
glad to help you. At least they'll tell you where to go, that's for sure.
Al
Alexander Viro
In article <vc7k99n...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu>,
Albert D. Cahalan <acah...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu> wrote:
[snip attributions - 'twas a dialog]
[snip]
>> Translation: I don't know a shit about it, but I'll whine anyway.
>
>No, it really does not matter. We have standard locations for
>the files, so they might as well be hard-wired no matter what
>init you use. (the list is easy to gather with strings on the
>binary and by reading the man page)
No, we haven't. Compare Debian and Redhat setups. And we don't
need it. Remember "thou shalt not impose arbitrary limits"? Confugure and
sed are there for purpose.
[snip]
>>> Scripts to start new software can be just dropped in.
>>> There is no need to edit anything by hand.
>>
>> a) Compare Debian and Solaris setups, please.
>
[non-sequitur re: ps snipped]
I pointed to difference in script locations on two systems using
SysV-like init. Severe difference, BTW. Look at it and you'll see. That's
for your "dropping in" argument.
>I can go on forever, just like you. I'm not about to fight
>a dicksize war on _your_ turf. Now, what letter does SCO
It is not a dicksize war. See above. And BTW, who the fucking hell
mentioned init here? Methink it was you. You flamed BSD folks for using
"non-standard" init scripts. Nice. Now we see that you don't know neither
SysV nor BSD init. You don't know that there is no stadard on location of
init scripts that would be common for systems using SysV-like init. That's
for your credibility.
[snip]
>No kidding. I could:
>
>a. Finish the standards-compliant /bin/ps which people actually want.
>
>b. Forget about that project, because there is a cool new feature
> that could be added to init. Of course it doesn't matter that
> I'd be wasting all the /bin/ps knowledge I've gathered.
Yup. In 7 days. You'ld lost all the knowledge. I see...
BTW, you admitted now that your suggestions have a good chance to be
completely out-off-the-wall ones. As if we didn't know it...
>
>> That's it. Albert replied to the second announcement and after some
>> conversation he admitted that he didn't ever look at the init sources
>> but plans to do it someday. Guess that this day didn't come yet.
>
>I happen to think my current project is more important, and I didn't
>have the disk space for both. The disk space problem will be solved
>fairly soon and the project will be done when time permits.
Gee... You don't have 200K free? Really? init.c is 50K (_after_
adding this stuff), init.h - 3K (ditto), utmp.c - 4K.
>
>Seeing that you already added the feature to init, I have even less
>reason to look at init. Maybe I'll write ncheck or rewrite skill.
>
>My "whining" was quite productive. I got you to hack init.
>It took me only a few moments to post the message, and look
^^^^
>what it accomplished. Meanwhile, I can hack other stuff.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You made a fool of yourself and got spanked. It would be an
accomplishment if it would be the first time. Sorry, no cookie.
BTW, my offer re: patched Eliza is still in place. I suspect that
many people both here and in c.o.l.* will be glad to contribute into
_that_ project. At least I will.
Al
Chris Mikkelson
acah...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu (Albert D. Cahalan) writes:
> > OK, so you gave your default answer. Nice. Now, tell me please
> > which names are hardwired into SysV init and BSD init resp.
>
> I really don't care, and I don't have a BSD init anymore.
> Perhaps you object to where SysV init looks for files?
> Deal. There needs to be a standard, and there is one.
Resistance is futile, you shall be assimilated. Sound familiar?
> > Then explain what's the difference between them.
>
> Its simple: BSD sucks and SysV doesn't. Compatibility with most of
> the world (SunOS 5, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare...) is rather nice,
> don't you think? Your skills won't be very useful if they don't
> work with mainstream commercial Unix systems.
Ummm... I went from FreeBSD to work with a "mainstream commercial Unix
system" unless Irix is insignificant to you. Believe me -- there's
little to no adjustment between them.
> > _Then_ explain WTF choice of init flavour affects easyness
> > of automatic software installation.
>
> Scripts to start new software can be just dropped in.
> There is no need to edit anything by hand.
Perhaps this is why the FreeBSD pkg system *does* this? If you don't
believe me, install the binary 'ssh' package. It installs a startup
script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d, IIRC, which will be run on bootup.
Best of both worlds here, Al. The (human) administrator can fire up a
text editor and edit a simple shell script (/etc/rc.conf,
variable=value lines with comments) instead of removing and adding
links, and the automatic software installers can place an
automagically run shell script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d.
Give it a rest. *BSD is not *nonstandard,* we are a different
standard. Or won't you be happy until we're all fully compliant with
the positively horrid Unix98 spec? Under no circumstances will I let
*you* decide what I run. If I wanted that sort of crap, I'd be
running windows.
-Chris
terry
Well, I have been fairly SPAM-free since the last post, let's
try another...
Alexander Viro wrote:
> In article <vc7k99s...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu>,
> Albert D. Cahalan <acah...@jupiter.cs.uml.edu> wrote:
> >BSD init is junk because it is awkward for automatic software
> >installation.
>
> OK, so you gave your default answer. Nice. Now, tell me
> please which names are hardwired into SysV init and BSD init
> resp. Then explain what's the difference between them. _Then_
> explain WTF choice of init flavour affects easyness of automatic
> software installation. Hint: don't mention upgrades of init
> itself unless you want to eat _very_ large crow.
Actually, BSD init is bad for automatic software installation
for several fairly obvious reasons, all having to do with the
need to run daemons (database or otherwise) at system startup
time:
o Software has to modify /etc/rc.local
This is a pain, because it means every package has
to be able to parse the file to add/remove itself
o There are no service level guarantees
This is a pain, because if one package depends on
services provided by another, you have no guarantee
that the service it depend on is up and available.
A simplistic example would be a package that depended
upon an SMTP server being present. If it depended
upon the *service* as opposed to a particular *server*,
then you couldn't simply replace "sendmail" with "qmail"
(for example), and expect to be able to end up with
functioning software.
o The idea of component replacement for layered software
does not exist
This is a pain because it means I can't pick different
srvice providers, other than the default, without more
detailed knowledge than a novice administrator (who
knows how to run a pagage management program, but not
vi, and expecially not vi on /etc/rc) would be likely
to have.
To belabor an example, if I wanted to replace sendmail
with qmail, I would have to edit /etc/rc if I were
using a BSD style init, but I could simply deinstall
the sendmail package, and install the qmail package in
its stead with a SYSV/rc.d style init. The script to
start the mail service would be removed, and replaced,
by the install process.
o BSD init does not support the idea of "halfway up".
BSD has "single user mode" and "everything and the
kitchen sink" mode.
You can argue the utility of having run levels, but
run *states* are a pretty clear win, especially for
some types of problems in the administrative domain.
o IBCS2 binary compatability
The IBCS2 standard, which both Linux and BSD merely
pay lip service to (neither support the standard's
mandated package management tools necessary to let
an administrator install shrink-wrapped IBCS2 binaries,
like Lotus 1-2-3, Sybase, Oracle, and Microsoft Word),
*requires* SYSV/rc.d style init for server software
installation.
For what it's worth, Linux has not got this right,
either, since it does not use the same numbers, nor
reserve UID ranges as required by IBCS2.
o SVR4/UnixWare/Solaris binary compatability
As with IBCS2...
I am a BSD bigot, for the most part. I like my "ps" arguments
to be "gax", and I like my "tar" arguments without a "-", and
I like my "Makefile"'s to be 3 lines long (or less) instead of
hulking behemoths from the bowels of a "configure" script that
duplicates tons of code from every other "configure" script, but
in subtly (and gratuitously) different ways...
But not taking the SYSV "init" mechanism simply because it was
a good idea with bad parents, well, that's pretty stupid.
Terry Lambert
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
Curt Welch
>
The correct quote is:
"As far as the differences between BSD and Systems V, that's
simple. System V sucks and BSD doesn't. :) -- Curt Welch"
:)
> Compatibility with most of
> the world (SunOS 5, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare...) is rather nice,
> don't you think? Your skills won't be very useful if they don't
> work with mainstream commercial Unix systems.
BSD and System V derived systems are so similar these days that the
differences created by vendor specific additions far outway the differences
caused by the OS history. Unix systems will always be different because
they will always come from different sources. If you want a standard,
stick with Microsoft products.
There was a time for many years were BSD was really much better than
System-V. Like all those years where the AT&T Unix systems didn't have
TCP/IP support, and ls couldn't produce multi-column output. But the
System-V systems of today now all include the important stuff from BSD
(like network support and all that goes with it), and the BSD systems have
added lots of compatibility with System-V so you can port software between
them.
--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
cu...@kcwc.com Webmaster for http://NewsReader.Com/
Alexander Viro
In article <3515AC28...@spam.me>, terry <do...@spam.me> wrote:
>Well, I have been fairly SPAM-free since the last post, let's
>try another...
>
>
>Alexander Viro wrote:
>Actually, BSD init is bad for automatic software installation
>for several fairly obvious reasons, all having to do with the
>need to run daemons (database or otherwise) at system startup
>time:
>
>o Software has to modify /etc/rc.local
>
> This is a pain, because it means every package has
> to be able to parse the file to add/remove itself
To start with, not every package must be mentioned in
/etc/rc.local. Most shouldn't.
>
>o There are no service level guarantees
>
> This is a pain, because if one package depends on
> services provided by another, you have no guarantee
> that the service it depend on is up and available.
SysV init doesn't provide dependecy analysis in any form. Add-ons.
Write one for BSD init and publish. What's the deal?
>
> A simplistic example would be a package that depended
> upon an SMTP server being present. If it depended
> upon the *service* as opposed to a particular *server*,
> then you couldn't simply replace "sendmail" with "qmail"
> (for example), and expect to be able to end up with
> functioning software.
[details snipped]
> To belabor an example, if I wanted to replace sendmail
> with qmail, I would have to edit /etc/rc if I were
> using a BSD style init, but I could simply deinstall
> the sendmail package, and install the qmail package in
> its stead with a SYSV/rc.d style init. The script to
> start the mail service would be removed, and replaced,
> by the install process.
And who doesn't let you call /etc/rc.local.MTA from /etc/rc or
/etc/rc.local ? As for the editing of /etc/rc - that's what sed is for.
If the thing should modify /etc/rc at all - make two sed scripts that
would install and uninstall it resp. If you feel that it would be useful -
do it and submit a patch to maintainers of the package in question.
>
>o BSD init does not support the idea of "halfway up".
>
> BSD has "single user mode" and "everything and the
> kitchen sink" mode.
>
> You can argue the utility of having run levels, but
> run *states* are a pretty clear win, especially for
> some types of problems in the administrative domain.
Usually SysV init is _not_ used this way. There are other tools
for that. And I'm not sure that it's a natural task for init at all.
There is one BSD init feature missed in Linux - secure mode gradations. It
would require several changes in the kernel and maybe it's worth doing.
Dunno... Speaking of SysV init - it would be nice to have an ability to
run several init-like things, each with its own inittab. That would be
absolutely independent thing and I see many uses for it. I'll try to roll
it from the current sysvinit.
[IBCS stuff snipped - I have too little experience with it]
>
>I am a BSD bigot, for the most part. I like my "ps" arguments
I am not. Generic UNIX geek, but with pathological background :-)
>to be "gax", and I like my "tar" arguments without a "-", and
I like it too. BTW, have it on Linux. WTF Sun switched to SysV is
beyond my understanding.
>I like my "Makefile"'s to be 3 lines long (or less) instead of
>hulking behemoths from the bowels of a "configure" script that
>duplicates tons of code from every other "configure" script, but
>in subtly (and gratuitously) different ways...
No objections on autoconf. Especially in cojunction with automake.
It's overkill in simple situations, but when the thing is _large_ it can
be useful. Plain configure is evil, but since when an output of
preprocessor (m4) should be readable? If you mean something like the
monstrosity that Larry included into Perl distribution (answer lots of
questions, etc.) - I'm 100% agree.
>
>But not taking the SYSV "init" mechanism simply because it was
>a good idea with bad parents, well, that's pretty stupid.
Heh. Just for clarity: I use SysV init - see my other posting
in this thread. The point is that Albert flaming anybody on the init
topics is pretty pathetic. He doesn't know neither BSD nor SysV init. He
doesn't know that there is no standard setup common for different systems
using SysV init (Debian and Solaris, for starters). That's for his
arguments re: easy installation. You have to check the setup anyway.
Pascal Gienger
On 22 Mar 1998 15:25:20 -0600, Chris Mikkelson <mikk...@maroon.tc.umn.edu> \
wrote:
>Perhaps this is why the FreeBSD pkg system *does* this? If you don't
>believe me, install the binary 'ssh' package. It installs a startup
>script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d, IIRC, which will be run on bootup.
And I think Mr Calahan has also some problems with technical details.
The directories named /etc/rcX.d, /etc/init.d etc are not controlled by
init, they are used by shell scripts in /etc/rc.
So init does call this shell script. That's all. At least in my IRIX at work,
this script is named in /etc/inittab. So it is not an init issue.
It would be no problem to do something like
#!/bin/sh
for i in /etc/rc2.d/*
do
$i start
done
(as a very trivial example to start processes)
as well with BSD init.
Albert is confusing facts a little bit.
SysV init has other changes to BSD init. Like the ability to control it
with a control command.
You can use "telinit 1" to switch to single user mode (or init 1, init is
itself capable to do the "telinit" way).
In BSD init you have to work with signals, like "kill -1 1".
But *REALLY* important changes are invisible to me.
Pascal
--
p...@znet.de Factum Data - A woman without a man
http://pascal.znet.de/ Pascal Gienger - is like a fish without
573...@skyper.de (Subj!) Inselg. 13, 78462 KN - a bicycle...
http://echo.znet.de:8888/ echo \8888:ed.tenz.oche\\:ptth
Georg Wagner
Merlin wrote:
> dannyman <dann...@arh0300.urh.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> : Merlin <ckn...@shell3.ba.best.com> wrote:
> : > scud <sc...@dataphone.se> wrote:
>
> : > : first of all i am linux user. if i understand it right difference between
> : > : freebsd and linux is that linux is systemV and freebsd is bsd unix. Linux
> : > : have many more users and big companies have begin releasing some appz for
> : > : linux (like corel), also O'Reilly have released many books on linux (i
>
>
> I said 'more literate', I did not say 'better typists'. :)
>
> As far as 'clear what he had to say'... There is at least one printed book
> on FreeBSD, he must not have looked at http://www.freebsd.org/ in his search.
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/handbook303.html#651
>
It's right there are more books explicitely written about Linux. Many so-called
generic books are really BSD (not FreeBSD) books . For example the books from
Stevens (Advanced programming in
the Unix environment, TCP/IP-Illustrated - Volume II and III even have the
BSD-daemon on their
covers -). Many of the Linux books pretend to be "Linux" - books. Mostly they have
some chapters
which are really Linux-specific, the rest is normal unix (how to use vi or all the
other important
unix tools). What is really new and good for unix beginners is that Linux opened
the market for
introductionary unix books. Before Linux it was difficult to get books which
introduced a unix user to
administrative tasks.
--
Georg Wagner
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ITMF-WGR FS117 Tel. 6 69 92 / +41 (0)1 236 69 92
Union Bank of Switzerland, Zurich
Rajappa Iyer
vi...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) writes:
> > To belabor an example, if I wanted to replace sendmail
> > with qmail, I would have to edit /etc/rc if I were
> > using a BSD style init, but I could simply deinstall
> > the sendmail package, and install the qmail package in
> > its stead with a SYSV/rc.d style init. The script to
> > start the mail service would be removed, and replaced,
> > by the install process.
>
> And who doesn't let you call /etc/rc.local.MTA from /etc/rc or
> /etc/rc.local ? As for the editing of /etc/rc - that's what sed is for.
> If the thing should modify /etc/rc at all - make two sed scripts that
> would install and uninstall it resp. If you feel that it would be useful -
> do it and submit a patch to maintainers of the package in question.
Um... having numbers on the startup and shutdown scripts (e.g. S20net,
S25mail, S30my_software_which_depends_on_mail) guarantee the order in
which they'll be executed when the run level changes. /etc/rc.local
does not guarantee this and editing the file with sed, awk etc. would
be a bitch if you customized it. The /etc/rc.d approach is much
cleaner.
--
<raj...@mindspring.com> a.k.a. Rajappa Iyer. New York, New York.
We're too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.
Giao Nguyen
Rajappa Iyer <raj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Um... having numbers on the startup and shutdown scripts (e.g. S20net,
> S25mail, S30my_software_which_depends_on_mail) guarantee the order in
> which they'll be executed when the run level changes. /etc/rc.local
> does not guarantee this and editing the file with sed, awk etc. would
> be a bitch if you customized it. The /etc/rc.d approach is much
> cleaner.
Add numbers to the scripts in /usr/local/etc/rc.d will also guarantee
the order. The only extra feature that SysV init gives over FreeBSD's
/usr/local/etc/rc.d scheme is that you can't guarantee which services
go down or up depending on which init level you are at.
Giao
Richard Tobin
>o Software has to modify /etc/rc.local
>
> This is a pain, because it means every package has
> to be able to parse the file to add/remove itself
Surely this is not true in FreeBSD now, since /etc/rc runs
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/*.sh.
-- Richard
--
Because of all the junk e-mail I receive, all e-mail from .com sites is
automatically sent to a file which I only rarely check. If you want to mail
me from a .com site, please ensure my surname appears in the headers.
terry
Richard Tobin wrote:
> >o Software has to modify /etc/rc.local
> >
> > This is a pain, because it means every package has
> > to be able to parse the file to add/remove itself
>
> Surely this is not true in FreeBSD now, since /etc/rc runs
> /usr/local/etc/rc.d/*.sh.
Name one package/port (we'll even forego commercial software,
for the sake of discussion) that utilizes this feature.
Giao Nguyen
terry <do...@spam.me> wrote:
> >
> > Surely this is not true in FreeBSD now, since /etc/rc runs
> > /usr/local/etc/rc.d/*.sh.
> Name one package/port (we'll even forego commercial software,
> for the sake of discussion) that utilizes this feature.
apache
--
Giao Nguyen
Zenin
terry <do...@spam.me> wrote:
: Name one package/port (we'll even forego commercial software,
: for the sake of discussion) that utilizes this feature.
$ ls /usr/local/etc/rc.d
50.m3.sh msql2.sh sshd.sh
apache.sh nntpcached.sh
fingerd.sh samba.sh
Hmm, it would seem the Modula-3 libs even use the
number-in-filename to control startup order/dependency...
--
-Zenin
ze...@archive.rhps.org
Richard Tobin
>> Surely this is not true in FreeBSD now, since /etc/rc runs
>> /usr/local/etc/rc.d/*.sh.
>Name one package/port (we'll even forego commercial software,
>for the sake of discussion) that utilizes this feature.
No idea, but I don't really understand your point. You say that BSD
startup is bad, I point out that it's been fixed in one respect, and you
say nothing uses the fix. So what's your conclusion? It's bad and
there was no point fixing it? That it was the wrong fix?
Seriously, I don't understand what you're getting at.
Patrick M. Hausen
ric...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) writes:
>In article <3519FE2A...@spam.me> terry <do...@spam.me> writes:
>>> Surely this is not true in FreeBSD now, since /etc/rc runs
>>> /usr/local/etc/rc.d/*.sh.
>>Name one package/port (we'll even forego commercial software,
>>for the sake of discussion) that utilizes this feature.
>No idea, but I don't really understand your point. You say that BSD
>startup is bad, I point out that it's been fixed in one respect, and you
>say nothing uses the fix. So what's your conclusion? It's bad and
>there was no point fixing it? That it was the wrong fix?
And, by the way - it _is_ used:
ry93@hugo10:/home/ry93> ls -l /usr/local/etc/rc.d
total 5
-rwxr-x--x 1 root wheel 136 Mar 15 17:05 apache.sh
-rwxr-x--x 1 root wheel 117 Mar 15 17:06 msql2.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 203 Jan 15 11:47 samba.sh
-rwxr-x--x 1 root wheel 166 Jan 21 13:28 squid.sh
-rwxr-x--x 1 root wheel 81 Jan 15 10:37 sshd.sh
So what's the point?
Another neat thing would be a _shutdown_ directory for shellscripts.
Patrick