Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 11:13:21 -0500 From: "Andrew L. Gould" <algould@datawok.com> To: "Michael Vondung" <michael@vcommunities.net>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Planning a FreeBSD desktop, basic questions. Message-ID: <200309051113.21847.algould@datawok.com> In-Reply-To: <001301c373be$9e8c9660$0200a8c0@tabby> References: <001301c373be$9e8c9660$0200a8c0@tabby>
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On Friday 05 September 2003 10:01 am, Michael Vondung wrote: > Hello! > > My apologies for the length of this post. Summary: 4.x or 5.x for a desktop > machine, disk partitioning for a workstation, miscellaneous installation > questions. > > Okay, the details! Now that I have my local FreeBSD server (mail/news, > router, firewall) successfully running, I'm ready to tackle my workstation. Consider running Samba. This will allow you to backup your files from your Windows XP hard drive to your server easily. > This is currently a system with a P4-2.6Ghz, 512MB RAM, an 80GB EIDE disk, > and "the usual" devices (CDR, CD/DVD player, network adapter and so on). At > this time it is running Windows XP, and I plan to keep it where it is. To > avoid having two operating systems on the same disk, I've purchased an > identical HD (WD800BB) where FreeBSD will live on. Since I don't download > movies or obscene amounts of MP3s, this is all a bit spacey. The XP disk > only uses 35 of 80GB and I doubt the FreeBSD one will even be this "full". > How times change. :) > > 4.8 or 5.1? Before answering, I have a question for the list: Am I correct in assuming that there is no Security branch or Stable branch for cvsup'ing 5.1? If the answer to the question above is yes (no Security/Stable branches), I would stick with 4.8 and cvsup to Stable unless you need hardware support that only exists in 5.1. (Do you need support for USB 2?) > > My "personal server" happily runs 4.8R and will be updated to 4.9 when > -stable becomes a bit more stable. It consists of older hardware and I > don't plan to upgrade it to 5.x any time soon, if ever. But what do you > recommend for the workstation? It doesn't have dual-processors and all of > its hardware seems to be supported by 4.x. This machine, though, will > eventually get 5.x. I'm wondering if it makes sense to put 4.8 on it now or > if it would be a better choice to just go with 5.1R. My primary concern > here is ease of upgrading. Will it be difficult to go from 4.9 to 5.2, > somewhere down the road? Mergemaster is a rather scary looking critter. > Differently put, will there be tools provided to allow this without too > much fiddling? > > Partitions > > If anything brings out the perfectionist in me, it is figuring out how to > partition a disk. What I have in mind for the 80GB FreeBSD disk for the > workstation is this: > > / = 512MB (too spacey, but that should be plenty for future releases) > swap = 3GB (see notes below) > /var = 1GB (probably too much, but the room's there) > /tmp = 1GB (256MB would probably be enough, but why not?) > /usr = the rest (essentially 74GB) > > The machine currently has 512MB of RAM, but since I won't have the > financial means or desire to get a new complete system in the next two to > four years, it's possible that I'll upgrade the memory first to 1GB and > later to 1.5GB if needed or wanted. 3GB would then be an acceptable amount > of swap space, but I certainly won't need this much right now, and I might > never. Am I overdoing it, or doesn't it really matter since I don't seem to > lack storage room anyway? > > Then there's this huge /usr partition. 74GB. I thought about splitting this > between /home and /usr, but I have honestly no idea (and experience) how > much space I'll end up using where. It probably wouldn't matter since I > won't need more 30 or 40GB of that space. There's also the possibility that > I might end up using the second disk (another 80GB one that currently > belongs to XP) for FreeBSD also. That would then be for /home, if for some > unexpected reason I should need more space. In other words, I would like to > keep this option open. > > This workstation won't hold "critical" data, so I do not plan on backing up > entire partitions. If all of this is inefficient and I'm missing the > obvious, please let me know. Keep in mind that I -am- new to the FreeBSD > and Unix world. I'm open for suggestions here. > > Miscellaneous > > - FreeBSD will be on the second disk. Is Sysinstall, if FreeBSD is > installed on the slave, going to ask if I'd like to put the BootMgr on the > first drive? > > - In case I decide to make the second disk (with FreeBSD) the master drive > some time in the not-so-near future, will it be fairly simple to accomplish > this? Only jumper rearrangement, MBR and fstab editing? No, it's not quite that easy. When you install the additional hard drive, run /stand/sysinstall. Select the Index option and run the Partition option followed by the Label option. You used these programs when you installed FreeBSD. Since you've obviously survived installation, you have no need to worry about this now. > > - Anything else I need to pay particular attention to? Besides backing up > important files on the XP disk in case something goes wrong. > > Thanks! > > Cheers, > Michael Best of luck, Andrew Gould
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