FreeBSDNews.com

[How-To] Raspberry Pi FreeBSD Web Server

By Leave a Comment

User spacemonkey shows us how to get a FreeBSD web server set up on Raspberry Pi. Follow the link below for the full set of instructions.

0. Introduction


The purpose of this guide is to provide step by step instructions on how to set up a system consisting of a Raspberry Pi credit card-sized computer, running the FreeBSD operating system and the nginx web server. The server is meant to operate “headless” (i.e. without a display or keyboard) and run at relatively low power (approximately 2 to 4 Watts). This guide assumes that the reader has some minimal familiarity with a Linux/Unix/BSD-like environment.

NOTE: Due to Raspberry Pi’s relatively low power CPU, some of the steps described below (e.g. compiling software) will take a few hours. Patience is a virtue :)

Aside from patience, you’ll need the following hardware:

– Raspberry Pi
– Power supply for the Raspberry Pi
– USB keyboard
– Display (with HDMI or Composite video connector)
– SD Card (recommended minimum size 4 GB)
– Ethernet cable
– A BSD or Linux PC with an SD card slot

1. Booting FreeBSD on the Raspberry Pi …

Full tutorial: http://devio.us/~spacemonkey/raspberry_pi_freebsd_web_server_howto.html

The BeaST storage is one year old

By Leave a Comment

User mezzantrop gives us an update on his FreeBSD dual-controller storage system dubbed BeaST. He has updated the project page and BeaST paper, as well as posted another article about zpool switching. Read the full updates at the links provided.

We all know that ZFS pool is designed to be used by a single machine only at any particular point of time, and when we want to access a zpool from another system we have to export it and import to the new server. This disadvantage makes simultaneous direct usage of the pool quite impossible for reliable dual-controllered storage systems.

Approaching online zpool switching between two FreeBSD machines

A year has passed since I got early results with the BeaST storage system concept. The first public announce was made on 2016.04.22 and the full paper was published a week after.

The BeaST storage is one year old

[How-To] Using a Raspberry Pi as a serial console server for FreeBSD

By Leave a Comment

This short guide by user solence will show you how to set your Raspberry Pi as a serial console server for FreeBSD. Follow the link below for the full set of instructions.

My home server runs FreeBSD 11.0, and, of course, has full disk encryption. This requires a passphrase to be entered while booting, so I need a keyboard and monitor attached, and have to be in the same room for restarts and after power outages. This is not acceptable at all. There is no need for a display and keyboard otherwise, and I want to be able to enter the passphrase remotely, but without compromising security. Luckily, the server has a serial port and I have a spare Raspberry Pi. So I can connect the serial port to the Raspberry Pi, SSH into it and use the serial console of the server just like physical access. Hooray for stuff from the 1960s still being useful!

So first things first, I need to connect the Raspberry Pi to the serial console. Since it only has USB (aside from GPIO), a USB to serial port adapter is necessary. The Raspberry Pi runs FreeBSD 11.0, which has good out-of-the-box support for the Prolific PL2303 chipset, so I just ordered a cheap apdater based on it. It probably works with Linux as well, if you’re using Raspbian. You can use dmesg to check if it was detected correctly:

Using a Raspberry Pi as a serial console server for FreeBSD

Intel donates $250,000 to FreeBSD Foundation

By 1 Comment

Recently, the FreeBSD Foundation announced a $250,000 donation from the computing giant Intel. This news follows a partnership between the open-source operating system, the Foundation behind it, and Intel to further improve FreeBSD support on Intel hardware.

 We were thrilled to announce at AsiaBSDCon 2017 a collaborative effort and partnership with Intel. Intel has committed to a $250,000 donation to show their support for FreeBSD as a viable operating system, foster collaboration between Intel, the Foundation, and FreeBSD, and to improve the support of FreeBSD in Intel products and technologies. Find out more about the partnership here.

New Uranium Level Donation and Collaborative Partnership with Intel: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/news-and-events/latest-news/new-uranium-level-donation-and-collaborative-partnership-with-intel/

[How-To] Installing & Updating FreeBSD 11.0 on Raspberry Pi

By 1 Comment

This guide by user  will show you how to install and update FreeBSD 11.0 on a Raspberry Pi machine. Follow the link below for the full set of instructions.

FreeBSD runs great on a Raspberry Pi, but the official images are all stable or current branches and there is no support for binary updates, i.e. freebsd-update. So I tried to figure out how to install the latest release version and keep it updated as well, without starting from scratch with a new image every time.

While it is possible to build a kernel and world on the Raspberry Pi itself, it takes about a week to finish (trust me, I tried) and you need a much larger /tmp on a disk or share for it to work in the first place. Since FreeBSD can also be cross-compiled, I decided to use my Xeon box to do the heavy lifting and then just install it on the Raspberry Pi.

Full tutorial: https://nerdazoid.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/installing-and-updating-freebsd-11-0-release-on-a-raspberry-pi/

Systems Thinking: Intel and the FreeBSD Project

By Leave a Comment

Intel will be engaging with the FreeBSD Foundation and the FreeBSD Project more often to provide better support for Intel products and technologies rooted in FreeBSD. In the past, they have collaborated on individual technologies but now they are heading towards a more holistic approach. Read the rest by following the link at the bottom of the page!

freebsd_foundationIntel

freebsdlogo

Contributed by Bev Crair, Vice President, Software and Services Group, General Manager, Strategic Software Initiatives

As Imad Sousou mentioned in his blog, Intel will be more actively engaging with the FreeBSD Foundation and the FreeBSD Project to deliver more timely support for Intel products and technologies in FreeBSD. While Intel has been contributing to the BSD code base for some time, for example with the Intel® Intelligent Storage Acceleration Library (Intel® ISA-L) and iflib drivers for Intel® network interface controllers (NICs), thus far the efforts of Intel and the community have been fragmented. The focus has been on individual devices or technologies rather than taking a more holistic systems approach.

 

Original article: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/systems-thinking-intel-and-the-freebsd-project/

[How-To] ownCloud with RaspberryPi 3 and FreeNAS

By Leave a Comment

In this tutorial, user ro55mo of Level1Tech shows us how to get an ownCloud setup on Raspberry Pi 3, using a FreeNAS system as a data store. Follow the link below for the full set of instructions.

owncloudfreenasThis guide is intended for the installation of OwnCloud on a RaspberryPi 3 with a FreeNAS server as the storage backend.

I am aware this is rather backward as FreeNAS has an OwnCloud plug-in you can install but I wanted to see if it was possible.

Objective

The object is to have the RaspberryPi act as a web front end for the backend storage. Their are guides on doing this with external USB drives but a FreeNAS server with ZFS and RAID struck me as a more sensible storage solution.

The storage must be totally transparent to the user (me). I don’t want to have to rely on the “external” storage module that comes with OwnCloud as these all end up with seperate folders inside your view of OwnCloud. If this was the case and I forgot to upload something to the right folder I could exhaust the 16GG MicroSD card on the RaspberryPi very fast.

As stated elsewhere in the guide my FreeNAS box is not in its “final form” yet. But once it is and I have an offsite backup in place I will replace Dropbox and Google drive with this solution.

Full tutorial: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/guide-owncloud-with-raspberrypi-3-and-freenas/112919/7

[How-To] Reading DHT11 Temp. Sensor on Raspberry Pi FreeBSD

By Leave a Comment

This tutorial by user Alex Samorukov shows us how to get the DHT-11 temperature sensor readings configured on a Raspberry Pi running FreeBSD. Follow the link provided below for the full set of instructions.

rpi_pinout

Connecting sensor to the RPi

DHT-11 is a very cheap temperature/humidity sensor which is commonly used in the IoT devices. It is not very accurate, so for the accurate measurement i would recommend to use DHT21 instead. Anyway, i had DHT-11 in my tool box, so decided to start with it. DHT-11 using very simple 1 wire protocol – host is turning on chip by sending 18ms low signal to the data output and then reading 40 bytes of data. Details about the protocol could be found in the specification. To read data from the chip it should be connected to the power (5v) and gpio pin. I used pin 2 as VCC, 6 as GND and 11 as GPIO (it is GPIO17, see pinout):

Full tutorial:

Reading DHT11 temperature sensor on Raspberry Pi under FreeBSD

FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

By 1 Comment

This is a lengthy discussion from Hacker News, derived from a tutorial by user on how to get FreeBSD set up on a MacBook Pro.mac_freebsd_orig

Top comment:

> Six years later, it less and less “Just Works”, started turning into spyware and nagware, and doesn’t need much less maintenance than Linux desktop — at least for my work, which is system administration and software development, probably it is better for the mythical End User person. Work needed to get software I need running is not less obscure than work I’d need to do on Linux or othe Unix-like system…. GUI that used to be nice and unintrusive, got annoying. Either I came full circle in the last 15 years of my computer usage, or the OSX experience degraded in last 5 years.So… it’s not just me. Somewhere between Snow Leopard and Mavericks I started finding building various things from source that never were a problem became an exercise in figuring out what library had been removed or moved or what Apple had done with lib/header paths or something else.

If people aren’t going over to another unix, what are they doing? Homebrew? Container-ing or virtualizing another unix? Or just suffering?

Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027506

Since 2008 or 2009 I work on Apple hardware and OS: back then I grew tired of Linux desktop (which is going to be MASSIVE NEXT YEAR, at least since 2001), and switched to something that Just Works. Six years later, it less and less Just Works, started turning into spyware and nagware, and doesn’t need much less maintenance than Linux desktop — at least for my work, which is system administration and software development, probably it is better for the mythical End User person. Work needed to get software I need running is not less obscure than work I’d need to do on Linux or othe Unix-like system. I am finding myself turning away from GUI programs that I used to appreciate, and most of the time I use OSX to just run a terminal, Firefox, and Emacs. GUI that used to be nice and unintrusive, got annoying. Either I came full circle in the last 15 years of my computer usage, or the OSX experience degraded in last 5 years. Again, this is from a sysadmin/developer kind of power user perspective; power user, whose definition of “fun” includes spending 6 hours in the middle of the night figuring how to get dual boot working with UEFI.

Original tutorial: https://gist.github.com/mpasternacki/974e29d1e3865e940c53

FreeBSD comes to 64-bit ARM

By Leave a Comment

User (Computerworld) writes about the developments of FreeBSD on the ARM 64-bit processor. ARM is known for its low-power and is mainly used in mobile devices. Lately, there has been an interest in using the ARM 64-bit processor in servers for cloud and web applications. To learn more, head on over to the link below.

cavium-100625475-large
Want to run something other than Linux on a ARM 64-bit server? Soon you can: a small software company has shown FreeBSD running on a 96-core server.

Semihalf, which is based in Poland, demonstrated a beta version of FreeBSD running on a server board built with Cavium’s ThunderX processors. That’s the first hardware based on ARM’s 64-bit processors to run FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is a flavor of the Unix OS developed by the University of California, Berkeley. The OS runs on a broad array of platforms.

Original article: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3000517/servers/freebsd-comes-to-64-bit-arm.html