Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 18:06:58 +0000 From: rob <europax@home.com> To: keith@mail.telestream.com Cc: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@nwlink.com>, "Frederick J Polsky v1.0" <fred@fredbox.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD guide for Linux admins Message-ID: <39BE70C2.89657B98@home.com> References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10009121234050.26871-100000@mail.telestream.com>
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I'm relatively new to FreeBSD, but have used SuSE Linux for a long time. I got fed up with the library situation in Linux. I would try to upgrade a package, and find I needed a new version of libraries. I would install the new library and find 10 applications that wouldn't work because the libaries were too new. I really like the ports. I used to hardly ever compile packages in Linux. A week or so I did my first make world. Try something like that with Linux! So my old Linux box now has OpenBSD on it (sorry, but I just wanted to see what it is all about:) I will keep FreeBSD on this laptop. Rob. keith@mail.telestream.com wrote: > > I could not agree with this more. > > Keith > > ================================= > Keith W. > At the helm <for better or worse> > > My non work related site > www.cydonia.net > ================================= > > On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Jason C. Wells wrote: > > > On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Frederick J Polsky v1.0 wrote: > > > > > I'm installing a FreeBSD box in the midst of a Red Hat shop; the other > > > admins desire documentation on the differences between same. Might > > > anyone know of a suitable link which has quick-n-dirty info on the > > > administrative differences between FreeBSD and various Linucies or some > > > sort of "FreeBSD for Linux admins" guide? > > > > No links here. > > > > You use a linux system just like any unix system really. It's the macro > > scale where usage/administration diverge. There is some bias here. Read > > through it to see what variations I observed between FreeBSD and Redhat. > > > > The biggest thing from an admin side is that FreeBSD doesn't have Sys V > > init scripts. THANK GOODNESS. You actually have to give the command line > > invocation to start processes and you have to ps and kill processes to > > stop them. (Unless they are like apachectl.) If your admins are looking > > for a script to start sendmail tell them, "Umm, 'sendmail -bd -q30' > > works for me." ;) > > > > A HUGE issue during install is that Linux insists on using the DOS based > > partitioning scheme. FreeBSD is utterly more flexible in this regard. > > For a BSD only system there are none of the DOS fdisk limitations. If > > your admins are trying to use things like extended DOS partitions, they > > are not following the BSD mindset. (Obviously. this doesn't matter post > > installation.) > > > > BSD doesn't have the 128MB swap partition limit. Consider this scenario. > > You have 1024 MB of ram. You want 2048 MB of swap. That would take > > sixteen linux swap partitions. If DOS sticks you with 15 total partitions > > allowed, you are screwed, blued, and tatooed. (Maybe you could use swap > > on another disc. This difference boggles my mind.) > > > > I, IMHO, think it is sacrilege to install a GUI based adminintration tool. > > A couple books on Linux admin that I have seen depend utterly on things > > like linuxconf. This may or may not apply to your audience. > > > > Another BIG thing IMO is that there are no "glibc version of the month" > > issues. As a BSD-ite running Linux, this caused me great consternation > > until I became apprised of how to deal with it. Just tell your peers that > > they don't have to worry about library version in the base system. The > > ports system handles glib issues well all by itself. > > > > And ports! Ports are a jewel. You install BSD using ports and packages. > > Packages are merely the binary version of a port. A port is a source > > version of a package. They both use the same administration tools. The > > one thing I have seen that the ports system seems to lack is the ability > > to _easily_ pick an arbitrary file from the disc and find out what > > software depends on it. You can still grep the ports database for the > > pattern that matches the file you are interested in to see what software > > uses that file. > > > > Redhat will add a new group with each new users name by default. BSD will > > not. No big deal, just be careful to check your user adds after your done > > to see if they are what you expected. > > > > As a cultural issue, I think more BSD-ites build software from source > > while more Redhat users install binary RPMs. > > > > Basically, the FreeBSD system feels more naked to me. Redhat felt more > > covered up and insulated from the admin. Being who I am, I prefer naked > > computing! :) > > > > Thank you, > > Jason C. Wells > > > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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