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[How-To] A FreeBSD 11 Desktop

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This in-depth guide by Cooltrainer will show you how to set up FreeBSD 11 as a desktop operating system. Head over to the link below for the full set of instructions.

FreeBSD is a fast, secure, modern Unix-like operating system with a fantastic community, great documentation, and powerful technologies like ZFS and LLVM. It’s my operating system of choice for everything from my i7-2600k desktop to my home router to my ARM plug computer jukebox. Though famed for its uptime in the datacenter the same OS is just as suited to desktop or laptop computing with a little work.

New Installations

The Getting FreeBSD page has links to ISOs for the six tier 1 architectures. This guide focuses on amd64/i386 PCs though is broadly applicable to them all. The ISOs are available in bootonly, CD, DVD, and memstick. I usually grab the nearest >1GB USB drive and ddthe newest memstick image to it. The larger DVD images are available complete with Ports distribution files for those doing fully-offline installations.

Full tutorial: https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/

Source:

When Nostalgia Hits: FreeBSD

It’s Time for FreeBSD! & FreeBSD-Debian ZFS Migration

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User Andy Mender is back with another insightful blog about FreeBSD. Read what he writes about FreeBSD’s storage capabilities — ZFS, bhyve, as well as an article about FreeBSD to Debian at the links below. 

For the last couple of weeks I have been delving deeper into the arcane arts of FreeBSD, paying extra attention to containers (jails), local/remote package distribution (poudriere) and storage utilities (ZFS RAID, mirrors). Truth be told, with every ounce of practical knowledge I was increasingly impressed by this Unix-like operating system. It’s nothing short of amazing, really! The irony lies in the fact that FreeBSD is an underdog in the Unix world (less than OpenBSD or Illumos, but still), despite the fact that it excels as a server environment and established many technologies currently in focus (process isolation, efficient networking and firewalls, data storage, etc.) years ago already. GNU/Linux is picking up pace, but it still has a long way to go.

……

What I mean to say is that FreeBSD has its place in the world and the time is ripe to truly begin to appreciate it!

It’s Time for FreeBSD!

Since the Zettabyte File System (ZFS) is steadily getting more and more stable on non-Solaris and non-FreeBSD systems, I decided to put my data pool created for the previous entry to the test. In principle, it should be possible to migrate a pool from one operating system to another. Imagine the following scenario – a company is getting new hardware and/or new IT experts and needs to migrate to a different OS. In my case it was from FreeBSD to Debian and vice versa. All data volumes were located in a single pool, but depending on the size of the company, it might be several pools instead. Before even thinking of migrating it is first important to make sure that all I/O related to the pool(s) to be migrated was stopped. When the coast is clear we can “zpool export <pool>” and begin our exodus to another operating system.

FreeBSD-Debian ZFS Migration

[How-To] Install & Configure Jails on FreeNAS Corral

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Check out this tutorial from Vivek Gite on how to use jails on FreeNAS Corral. Jails was a feature in FreeNAS 9.10 and was replaced with Containers in Corral. Follow the link below for the full set of instructions.

I recently installed or upgraded to FreeNAS Corral (version 10). However, I noticed that there is no support for FreeBSD jails as of 26/March/2017. How do I install and configure traditional FreeBSD jails on FreeNAS Corral (version 10)?

FreeNAS Corral now supports Docker containers for doing all of its “application hosting” and existing jails/plugins data will simply continue to live in the jails/dataset in the ZFS volume but will be inactive, since jails are no longer used in Corral. This tutorial shows you how to create and configure FreeBSD jail on FreeNAS Corral 10 from command line.

Full tutorial: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-install-and-configure-jails-on-freenas-corral-10/

BSDNow.TV Episode 186: The Fast And the Firewall: Tokyo Drift

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In this BSD Now episode, hosts Allan Jude and Benedict R report on AsiaBSDcon, TrueOS, FreeBSD News, IllumOS, and more. Press play below to tune in:

BSD Now weekly content roundup: http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2017_03_22-the_fast_and_the_firewall_toyko_drift

Jupiter Broadcasting show notes: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/107716/fast-the-firewall-tokyo-drift-bsd-now-186/

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

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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

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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

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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/

A Penguin tries out FreeBSD 11 & TrueOS

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This article by user osemotions details a FreeBSD 11 desktop installation, as a Linux user steering the wheel. Read about their trial using FreeBSD below, in addition to trying out TrueOS.

A Penguin tries FreeBSD 11.0 RELEASE on an old i386 PC as his main desktop operating system, for the first time, for a weekend.

The story begins, you guess, with the operating system installation using the FreeBSD i386 hybrid image in order to boot a USB key.

Installation

Installation went without problems and everything flowed as I expected. For a user who lives in the world of Debianized Penguins, being able to install the superb ZFS filesystem is somewhat interesting at least.

A Penguin tries out FreeBSD 11 as a desktop operating system: http://www.osemotions.com/a-penguin-tries-freebsd-as-a-desktop-operating-system/

A Penguin tries out TrueOS: http://www.osemotions.com/a-penguin-tries-out-trueos-formerly-pc-bsd/

[How-To] Ansible with FreeBSD

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This guide by user Rubénerd shows us how to get Ansible set up on FreeBSD. Ansible is a powerful open-source IT automation engine designed for efficient workflow. See the link below for the full set of instructions.

I use Ansible where possible at work; it’s really wonderful stuff for Linux. Unfortunately, its support for the BSDs has never been fantastic, evidenced by their zero-dependency claim when a Python interpreter is required!

Given the dearth of BSD Ansible material online, I thought I’d share some tips I’ve learned since trying it out. This is all valid as of Ansible 2.2.1.0.

Bootstrapping a fresh FreeBSD install

Since I wrote my first playbooks, the Ansible BSD docs now list a process using the “raw” method to bootstrap dependencies on a fresh FreeBSD install:

Full tutorial: https://rubenerd.com/ansible-on-freebsd/