Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 08:46:40 -0400 From: Dan Flemming <danflemming@mac.com> To: teevie3@maine.rr.com Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Configuration Message-ID: <3982D230.E7627B0@mac.com> References: <398249FF.3EFBE096@maine.rr.com>
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fucker bastard wrote: > > Hi there! > > `FreeBSD has an outline-structured visual configuration editor ... you > can enter the configuration of every device the OS supports and can > therefore get a successful installation on the first try almost > every time. IBM, Microsoft, and others would do well to emulate > FreeBSD's > approach.'' > > Saw this on your page and, after installing the OS, how can one use this > configration program to enable my SB AWE32 PnP ISA card? Most of the > how-to's describe recompiling the kernel to use the sound card. Is this > absolutely necessary or is there another option available to me? Generally speaking, most adding of device driver support in FreeBSD is done through kernel compiles. This is actually a good thing, for several reasons. 1. It's fairly straightforward. Add /usr/src/sys to your installation (it takes up about 30MB on my system, running 3.4; probably about the same, maybe a little bigger, in 4.x) and then cd to the appropriate conf directory (for most North American systems, look for i386/conf), copy GENERIC to a file named after your machine, and then edit that file. Comment out every device driver and cpu you don't have, and then run /usr/sbin/config on the new file. cd to the directory it tells you, type make depend, then make, and finally make install. On my 486DX2/80 gateway machine, the whole process takes - from scratch - about three or four hours (not including the source download). 2. You get a smaller kernel. My kernel is just 33891 bytes over a megabyte. The 3.4 generic kernel is about 2 and a quarter megabytes. That's because I removed support for non-486 cpus, SCSI devices, PCI, and every network card I don't have. (I have a single IDE HD. While I do have a secondary IDE port, and the possibility of a slave drive on my primary, I took out support for those too, because I don't have any intention of ever using them. :) 3. You get to add lots of obscure device drivers in. There are a whole pile of drivers in LINT that people don't really need to run FreeBSD, but want to have, like your sound card. While you've got a pretty mainstream card, not everyone does, and so custom kernels allow them to support their devices without everybody else's kernels getting bigger (which is what happens in the Windows world). To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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