Hello FreeBSD gurus,

I have recently installed FreeBSD 5.3 on my hard disk and it is a completely new experience to me. It is one of the few OSes that have detected my network card without a flaw and also configured X Windows automatically! I could not believe that when I booted into FreeBSD and typed startx, I got the TWM screen immediately.

Installation was a breeze, especially since I'm used to the Debian type of installer (with text-based menus and a non-linear approach) and I managed to add a boot option to the existing GRUB to boot FreeBSD.

Now I have a few questions.

• Booting takes a long time. In one of the boot messages, FreeBSD pauses for a very long time. How do I shorten the boot process?
• I wish to configure the sound. I have already done this in Linux using the i810_audio module in OSS and intel8x0 module in ALSA. So I am quite confident of my hardware. Just how do I configure this in FreeBSD?
• I created a user account 'hari' during the installation, but now I am unable to login using this user even when I type the password correctly. Luckily the root account works fine for now. What could be the problem?
• I wish to use KDE (which I already installed) as the desktop and the KDM as the desktop manager (for graphical login). How do I configure this?
• What is the basic personal firewall required for FreeBSD? I will use this purely as a desktop box with no outgoing services, so I need a basic, default setup.

You've got a range of choices for the "firewall".... I use ipfilter (IPF) on my FreeBSD box - if you want to use ipfilter, add this to your /etc/rc.conf file:

And then create an /etc/ipf.rules file and add the following code - (my setup's a NIC to an ADSL modem router, modify if necessary to suit your setup etc) - the code below is sufficient for a very basic firewall offering no services - it drops all unsolicited incoming connections whilst allowing all outbound connections with state.

For KDE with a graphical KDM login, edit your /etc/ttys file and change your ttyv8 line to :

And create a .xsession file and add:

Welcome to the "paradise" Harishankar. FreeBSD is outstanding, you will find it out eventually

1 - In which message is BSD taking long time? It maybe a service that you can disable during boot time to speed things up.

2 - To configure the sound in FreeBSD is quite simple. There're two ways: one that is automatic and one which isn't. As root, type:

# kldload snd_emu10k1

That would load the module for Sound Blaster cards based on the chipset emu10k1. Substitute that for your module. If you want FreeBSD to try it out automatically, try this:

# kldload snd_driver

Once you are happy with your sound and wish to get sound everytime you boot, add the following line to your /boot/loader.conf, something like this:

snd_emu10k1_load="YES"

More info about sound is found here:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...und-setup.html

3 - That can be very tricky, I don't know why, but I found it a bit buggy, since I did not understand it well. I tried several times to create an user called "r2d2" to be of class ftp. I wanted, as you know, use this user to be a ftp user only. It always returned some weird messages about /etc/passwd or something. I moved that file and things started working fine again. Either way, check this link out:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...modifying.html

4 - The first thing you need to know, is if you have KDE installed. If you don't, there are two ways of installing it. You could install from binaries:

# pkg_add -r kde

or compile it from source:

# cd /usr/ports/x11/kde3
# make install clean

since your profile says you've used Debian and gentoo, you are familiar with those tools: pkg_add works similarly to Debian's apt-get, while ports works similar to Gentoo's portage/emerge. So yes, you get the best of both worlds . Once done with KDE installation, you will need to create a xinitrc file at your home directory. That file is read every time you time "startx". Do this:

echo "exec startkde" > ~/.xinitrc

when logged as your user(normal) account and you are all set. More info about that is found here:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...ok/x11-wm.html

5 - Firewalls. Your very best bet is to look at FreeBSD firewalls section:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...firewalls.html

it has examples and packages for you to enjoy. As you might have already figured, 99% of any question you will ever have with FreeBSD is on the hand book. Hands down to the very best documentation I've ever found on the net for any OS.

Good luck!

Thanks for the help.

But suddenly there is a new problem and I'm not sure what went wrong.

When I booted to FreeBSD now I could not start X windows at all. startx keeps giving me an error. Strangely I didn't change any settings at all, nor does there exist any file inside /etc/X11.

Well, I think I'll reinstall FreeBSD fresh and go from there again.

About the slow boot process.

Actually it happens when I've switched off my cable modem. When the cable modem is switched on, the booting takes place quite quickly.

It's not due to DHCP either because I don't have DHCP (only static IP).

Also I noticed (before the X server problem came up) that even KDE did not load fully unless I switched on my cable modem. What could be the problem here?

Yea you might have a static ip but your computer is still looking for a connection till it times out

Then how do I disable the ethernet from activating during startup?

When I type then everything loads as normal. But when the connection is active, I cannot switch off the modem because FreeBSD seems to be waiting for some connection before proceeding.

This happens when loading X with startx as well as when KDE is being loaded (KDE splash screen).

Check your /etc/rc.conf for entries like

ifconfig_vr0="inet 192.168.168.3 netmask 255.255.255.0"

This is how you statically set up your network. The default route entry should also be in there of course:

defaultrouter="192.168.168.1"

Can you provide the output of your dmesg and /var/log/messages (the boot section) so we know where it goes wrong during the bootup.
The thing I encountered was that I didn't have a default route setup and my NTP service was trying to get out of my house onto the WWW. Which failed of course and took quite some time.....

More information is helpfull!!

Greetings,


Naq.

Yea your configs should be in rc.conf in the /etc directory, that is the file you would change to add or delete things from startup such as network and ssh and firewall stuff, that is also the file that sysinstall would write to if you added something of that nature

Oh, I see. Thanks. By the way, I haven't had time to boot into FreeBSD all of today because I was busy with other work, but I'll do as you suggestion when I get the opportunity! FreeBSD does take some getting used to but I'm sure I can learn all that.

If you are comfortable using Linux then the transition to FreeBSD isn't very difficult. I am sort of FreeBSD newbie myself, but getting a lot comfortable with it, the more I use it.

I started my nix career on BSD and its not that much diff then linux

I think FreeBSD is easier to use than linux. I was using linux(slackware, my favourite distro) and i switched to FreeBSD few months ago.

I feel the same way, I used to think that slackware was easier way back but then I found out how to use ports and they have added so much more functionality to bsd over the years that BSD seems easier to me as well

Yeah ports are the "killer feature" on FreeBSD for me. Its a system thats so simple to use but very powerful as well.