Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:51:36 -0500 From: Adam Vande More <amvandemore@gmail.com> To: "Michael D. Norwick" <mnorwick@centurytel.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE Installation success Message-ID: <AANLkTi=OTro2HN%2B-r7-ojfQO67Hcqu3aOAt2-YgdRn_d@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4CC61FF7.9050605@centurytel.net> References: <4CC61FF7.9050605@centurytel.net>
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On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 7:25 PM, Michael D. Norwick <mnorwick@centurytel.net > wrote: > Good Day; > > It is with some pleasure that I have finally succeeded in building an > operative workstation with a custom kernel and world, Xorg 1.7.5, > KDE4-4.5.2 from ports, most common network applications as well as Firefox3, > and Thunderbird 3.1.5. The machine is an older Dell GX270 P4 2.4 GHz PC > with 3G of ram and an ATI Radeon video adapter. > This install has not been without it's trials. > 4 weeks ago I backed up all my data and reformatted from Debian 'lenny' to > GPT/ZFS/8.1-RELEASE. The next two weeks did not go so well. While I tried > hard to get ZFS formatted drives to work reliably, intermittent unexplained > core dumps with reboots gave me cause for concern. I finally reinstalled > msdos boot records and formatted the drives UFS. That install has lasted 2 > more weeks. I liked ZFS v14 and would like to try it again when I get more > current hardware with more ram and SATA drives. > My next challenge was building KDE4, Firefox, and Thunderbird from ports. > KDE4 and friends (QT4) took days on this machine to build, install and > setup. I initially installed the ports tree using portsnap but was having > so much trouble building the mozilla stuff from ports I moved to cvsup and > portupgrade. This is also what I used to install the kernel and base source > tree. Several iterations of make - clean and deinstall/reinstall along with > cvsup'ing ports a couple of times finally got me to a working browser and > mail client. > I have had a time getting Flash working with Firefox. I have not yet got > the plugin working in Firefox but Opera, using linux-f10 allows my kids view > their on-line home school lessons. Audio was somewhat of a challenge to get > sound from an AC97 on-board audio chipset. snd_hda was the module that > eventually provided the needed audio driver for this chipset. I think I > forgot what configuring this stuff was like during my 'hamm', 'bo', and > 'slink', debian days. > > My thanks to the entire FreeBSD/KDE development team on allowing me to > experience the fruit of their efforts. I still like turning the knobs > myself. I'll keep reading the manuals. :) > >From a clean install: portsnap fetch extract cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portmaster make install clean && rehash portmaster -d x11-servers/xorg-server x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard x11-drivers/{YOUR VIDEO DRIVER PORT} -- (Could also use the nvidia binary.) echo 'dbus_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf echo 'hald_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf Follow handbook entries on sound, browser, and any other items . Flashblock makes flash much more bearable and it's not very intrusive like noscript. Time spent on this method is considerable especially with slow hardware, but you have a nice updated system and the build process is quite reliable IME. 99% of the time is spent in compiling, there is very little to 0 time spent in troubleshooting if you are practiced in the area. Upgrading an existing install is another matter entirely, on fast hardware I prefer to clean out all installed packages and start from scratch. -- Adam Vande More
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