FreeBSD: March 2008 Archives
I'm working on the infrastructure for the NOLA Bloggers Bazaar project. I fired up windfola, my 4U, 4-processor (750mhz) Compaq Proliant. It had Debian "Etch" on it, but I decided to experiment a bit.
I installed FreeBSD 7.0, and it went very smoothly. Using the "ports collection" with FreeBSD is an interesting and enjoyable way to build a server. While FreeBSD has packages like the popular Linux distributions do, the "ports" are a different principle. Instead of downloading and installing pre-compiled binaries, you go into a tree structure (/usr/ports), choose what you're looking to install, and run a pre-configured Makefile.
This procedure makes old-school *NIX people more comfortable, since you're compiling specifically for the particular machine. I successfully got Apache2 and php5 up and running with no problem. Still, since I already have a FreeBSD server (shadowfax), I opted to go back to Linux for windfola, in the form of Ubuntu.
I downloaded the "server" distribution of Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), burned it and booted it up. Unlike the "desktop" CDs, this is not a "live" boot. It kicked directly into a character-based install. After getting started and configuring the hard drives (I essentially used the same partition configuration that was there for FreeBSD, with ext3 file system), the install asked what server packages I wanted to install. One of the choices was LAMP.
Yup, it said LAMP with a box to tick an X next to it.
Linux
Apache
MySQL
Perl/PHP/Python
LAMP
ORA promotion of LAMP has made them a lot of money publishing books in the last few years, and it's pretty much a no-brainer for most Linux/FreeBSD shops that they'll go down this road. My first LAMP configuration was on shadowfax, and that was a drawn-out process. I fetched all the necessary tarballs, made a pot of tea, and did a lot of web surfing while all that stuff compiled. This time, I ticked a check box and all four appeared on the server. VERY nice!
Of course, the package installs are never perfect, so there's tweaking to be done. I'm using advice from a HowtoForge article entitled The Perfect Server - Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu 7.10) So far, so good.
I installed FreeBSD 7.0, and it went very smoothly. Using the "ports collection" with FreeBSD is an interesting and enjoyable way to build a server. While FreeBSD has packages like the popular Linux distributions do, the "ports" are a different principle. Instead of downloading and installing pre-compiled binaries, you go into a tree structure (/usr/ports), choose what you're looking to install, and run a pre-configured Makefile.
This procedure makes old-school *NIX people more comfortable, since you're compiling specifically for the particular machine. I successfully got Apache2 and php5 up and running with no problem. Still, since I already have a FreeBSD server (shadowfax), I opted to go back to Linux for windfola, in the form of Ubuntu.
I downloaded the "server" distribution of Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), burned it and booted it up. Unlike the "desktop" CDs, this is not a "live" boot. It kicked directly into a character-based install. After getting started and configuring the hard drives (I essentially used the same partition configuration that was there for FreeBSD, with ext3 file system), the install asked what server packages I wanted to install. One of the choices was LAMP.
Yup, it said LAMP with a box to tick an X next to it.
Linux
Apache
MySQL
Perl/PHP/Python
LAMP
ORA promotion of LAMP has made them a lot of money publishing books in the last few years, and it's pretty much a no-brainer for most Linux/FreeBSD shops that they'll go down this road. My first LAMP configuration was on shadowfax, and that was a drawn-out process. I fetched all the necessary tarballs, made a pot of tea, and did a lot of web surfing while all that stuff compiled. This time, I ticked a check box and all four appeared on the server. VERY nice!
Of course, the package installs are never perfect, so there's tweaking to be done. I'm using advice from a HowtoForge article entitled The Perfect Server - Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu 7.10) So far, so good.
Still fooling around with this, but no joy as of now. The install CD booted up, but the default install would not recognize the keyboard, so I didn't get very far. Tried a "safe" mode install next. That got past the keyboard issue. I went through the install wizard and it created the file system, installed the OS (supposedly), and got to the point where it was asking for CD2. My CD2 isn't being seen by the system, so it let me cancel that and just start PC-BSD from there. I let it reboot. The bootloader came up, I chose the PC-BSD partition, but then it went into an auto-boot cycle.
I'll come back to it after I experiment with the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 7.10, to see if the Flash workarounds are sufficient to justify installing that OS on the new tablet.
I'll come back to it after I experiment with the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 7.10, to see if the Flash workarounds are sufficient to justify installing that OS on the new tablet.
