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Date:      18 Apr 2002 23:51:00 -0700
From:      Ken McGlothlen <mcglk@artlogix.com>
To:        Mark Filipak <filipak@earthlink.net>
Cc:        freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Are you sure? (was: Hello from a newbie: Mark Filipak)
Message-ID:  <873cxs2ncb.fsf@ralf.artlogix.com>
In-Reply-To: <3CBF5140.1AAB72B4@earthlink.net>
References:  <3CBF3231.9EB3E4A5@earthlink.net> <87hem84p9b.fsf@ralf.artlogix.com> <3CBF5140.1AAB72B4@earthlink.net>

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Mark Filipak <filipak@earthlink.net> writes:

| > However, I would gently recommend that you toss aside your intimidation,
| > and install FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE.  I can guarantee that it will come with
| > all the tools you need, and it's not overly difficult to configure into a
| > gateway or firewall or any sort of server you desire.
| 
| Harumph! That's *not* what I've heard.

Well, GallantWEB is a commercial product, and they probably have some interest
in telling you that it *is* overly difficult.  It's more difficult than
GallantWEB, of course, which simplifies everything for you, but you wind up
with a lot more flexibility and knowledge going with 4.5-RELEASE.

Wanna know how to make a FreeBSD 4.5 box into a gateway?  Have the following
line in /etc/rc.conf:

        gateway_enable="YES"

You're done.  No kernel recompile necessary.

What else do you want?  NFS?  A few more options in /etc/rc.conf is all you
need.  xntpd (the Network Time Protocol daemon)?  Same thing.  Even IPv6
support is built-in.  sendmail?  No problem---or you can run qmail or postfix
instead if you want the simplicity and security.

Now, firewalls are trickier, of course, complicated by the fact that there's
more than one package that will do firewalling (ipfw/natd, ipfilter/ipnat, pf).
I tend to use ipfilter/ipnat, which works pretty well for what I want.  Either
way you go, you're going to be able to get a lot of help from here.

| Do you promise not to foresake me, darling?

Well, sweetie, we've just met.  :)

| My last experience trying to install BSD from scratch (two years ago) ended
| with reformatting the disk and reinstalling Windows 98.  The installer asked
| me questions I didn't know how to answer, so I said "Yes" to everything.
| A couple of years ago I tried participating in a group that was trying to do
| a thing called "EasyBSD". The idea was to make FreeBSD installation easy. It
| didn't take me very long to realize that the leaders of the group had no idea
| how to do that.

Well, okay.  If you really want a very easy to install version of BSD, you're
probably best off with Mac OS X, which even an old gnarled Unix junkie like me
has to admit is pretty sweet.  BSD isn't a trivial install; it's a brain
transplant in many ways, and it helps to know what you're doing a bit.  But
then, that's why the questions@freebsd.org list exists.

| [...] but knowing that UNIX systems don't generally have safety nets -- that
| one wrong command switch can screw me, trashing the system that I already
| have running -- that does scare me.

Actually, Unix has more of a safety net than a lot of the machines you're used
to.  You can't treat root access cavalierly, that's true, but rarely do you
ever get into a situation where you can't recover from.

Before you proceed much further, I'll just say the obvious:

     *  Keep a changelog somewhere.
     *  Back up your user files (everything else on the system is almost
        certainly restorable).
     *  Prepare to stuff lots of information into your head.  :)

C'mon, this'll be fun.

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