From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Sep 18 08:15:38 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8157F16A40F for ; Mon, 18 Sep 2006 08:15:38 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from arindam.mukerjee@gmail.com) Received: from py-out-1112.google.com (py-out-1112.google.com [64.233.166.181]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C224143D4C for ; Mon, 18 Sep 2006 08:15:37 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from arindam.mukerjee@gmail.com) Received: by py-out-1112.google.com with SMTP id o67so4884714pye for ; Mon, 18 Sep 2006 01:15:37 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=fBVLwUx4w6Gb7uJeLytl0R/v8+AXV+wmvCt6TAtEVOzkyU1Wumh/TBWPEZ3cdiPgjkbtJxzU2SaqVii+HPrOKGEsEr6CdG0ccW6JlFRo3WCsBwnB6ZD8dtgEdXjGbrAICeRYkCDhUk/7Hj3TjSlS3+Ru8uff1vliC5aLPo0GFLs= Received: by 10.35.84.12 with SMTP id m12mr23267564pyl; Mon, 18 Sep 2006 01:15:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.35.13.20 with HTTP; Mon, 18 Sep 2006 01:15:36 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 13:45:36 +0530 From: Arindam To: "Joel Adamson" In-Reply-To: <20060917192245.94856.qmail@web50413.mail.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <20060917192245.94856.qmail@web50413.mail.yahoo.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Newbie Experience (As promised) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 08:15:38 -0000 > Dear Very Helpful and Informative FreeBSD List, > > I installed FreeBSD on Friday Night and tried very hard to get it all working. My initial X problem actually fixed itself (you can imagine my surprise), however, even with that, our computer is useless as a desktop (or anything else) without an internet connection. My hardware is unsupported and despite my best efforts, I decided it would be better to expedite the process and I installed Mepis Linux. > Which version of FreeBSD did you install. > I would hardly describe it the way another newbie did one week ago. It was a good challenge. I'll wait until I'm a better administrator and there's more support for hardware I might have. > > The only really annoying thing was that I perpetually had trouble mounting my usb flash drive. I think this was a filesystem problem. > What was the problem? I am a newbie too ... my second week on FreeBSD. I could manage mounting my 1G Memorex traveldrive without a bother. The usbd daemon is configured to run on boot. Depending on which USB port I connect it to, I do something like: mount -t msdosfs [-o ro] /dev/da0s1 I prefer to use "-o ro" whenever I mount a file system on some directory and I don't want to take any kind of risks. > Thanks for any help you've offered, > Joel > > Joel J. Adamson > Arlington, MA > > Just to share it with you. I had a couple of other fixes to do. I could not get my AMD PcNet 97c79x ethernet card to work with my FreeBSD 6.1 installation, although the device could be detected and configured through sysinstall / ifconfig. My packets just won't get past the LAN card on to the wire. So I swapped it with another card I had on a different PC which dual boots to RHEL and Windows. That is a Realtek card, and it worked fine with FreeBSD. The other issue I faced was with configuring my old 3-button Logitech mouse. But even that works now on X - some configuration changes. I disabled moused by removing moused entries from /etc/rc.conf - I felt it was making the mouse freeze in the X term. Get some of the window managers - they help. Afterstep / XFCE / FVWM are good points to start. Cheers, Andy