Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:41:53 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: DK <asdzxc111@yahoo.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BigApache for Windows - Why doesn't BSD have an installer package like this ??? Message-ID: <20040729164153.GC4084@orion.daedalusnetworks.priv> In-Reply-To: <20040729055330.90694.qmail@web41007.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040728171010.GA86397@orion.daedalusnetworks.priv> <20040729055330.90694.qmail@web41007.mail.yahoo.com>
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On 2004-07-28 22:53, DK <asdzxc111@yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
> > > Whats the purpose of having to manually set the system to automount ??
> > > as opposed to having it as a system install default ?? if there is an
> > > advantage, I am sure its for the 0.01% of the user base
> >
> > It's more in the range of 99.9%. Automounting can be annoying like hell
> > when you happen to accidentally insert media in your drives. It can
> > also be insecure if you don't want anyone to use the machine you've
> > installed to mount CD-ROMs, floppies or other media of their choise.
>
> Accidently ?? what ?? Like you were walking down a hall way, tripped &
> slipped & accidenlty shoved a CD into the drive :))
>
> I can put a CD into Windows 2000 & it has never been accessed unless I
> explicitly do it. - I don't see the problem ??
Yes, which is exactly why every CD-ROM I've put in Windows 2000 installations
is immediately scanned and autorun in the default setup of the system.
Including those CD-ROMs whose autorun programs are brain-damaged and crash
because of disk errors or bugs in the autorun program itself.
Oh come on, I consider autorunning of removable media a security risk. You
like it and try to present the opposite behavior as a fault. I don't think
there is any case we can agree on this point. The best we can do about it
is help you install amd, the automounter daemon and let us all live in peace :P
> > Instead of leaving *all* the users exposed to risks like this, which is
> > the usual Windows philosophy of doing stuff, FreeBSD has the capability
> > to automount media but keeps it disabled by default.
>
> Why not enable it by default & then allow people who love messing around
> with OS disable it manually - this seems more logical ...
Exposing everyone to an unnecessary risk seems more logical just to please the
users that come from a different OS? Hmmm... I really don't think so.
> hey why not add a nice GUI that allows you to edit all the OS configurations
> .... nahh ... no one would use that !!
Because it requires a lot of things to work Right(TM) from the moment a
computer fires up until the point that a usable GUI can reach a state of
stability. You can always enable XDM at boot time and wait just a bit until
X11 fires up, when you will be able to log into your BSD machine using a GUI.
This is not something that should be forced on everyone though, because a lot
of things might break and leave the user in the sorry state the Windows users
find themselves so very often -- with a computer that has barely managed to
reach a graphical mode and then froze when some driver did a stupid thing,
leaving nothing but a blank screen to stare at.
> > Is it so hard to edit a text file like rc.conf and add a simple line
> > like this?
> >
> > amd_enable="YES"
>
> Hard to edit... no your right, knowing where the file is located, yes ??
> knowing where in the file it needs to go or does ordering matter, yes ??
One of the first things you see when logging into your BSD system is:
o The Handbook and FAQ documents are at http://www.FreeBSD.org/ and,
along with the mailing lists, can be searched by going to
http://www.FreeBSD.org/search/. If the doc distribution has
been installed, they're also available formatted in /usr/share/doc.
All of the things you've presented so far as "difficult" and "confusing" are
explained in the documentation pointed at by this message. If you had read
even the Handbook you'd already know that it contains a chapter devoted to
"Configuration and Tuning", which includes:
11.3 Core Configuration
The principal location for system configuration information is
within /etc/rc.conf. This file contains a wide range of
configuration information, principally used at system startup to
configure the system. Its name directly implies this; it is
configuration information for the rc* files.
An administrator should make entries in the rc.conf file to
override the default settings from /etc/defaults/rc.conf. The
defaults file should not be copied verbatim to /etc - it contains
default values, not examples. All system-specific changes should be
made in the rc.conf file itself.
If something was confusing or you couldn't locate something in the docs, as
every single page of the documentation says in the bottom of the text you
could have mailed your questions here:
For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before
contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.
If you have tried all of these instead of bitching that FreeBSD is not
Windows, I'm sure something more productive would have happened :-/
> > Do you really mean that this is so much harder to do than fumble and
> > fight with multiple dialogs, which you have to remember by heart of
> > course, just to find that disabling automounting is impossible (unless
> > you download TweakMyRegistry version 95.3.2000.13.27 paying careful
> > attention to the version numbers because the wrong version can mess up
> > your entire system with a single click)?
>
> TweakMyRegisty ?? not needed - use MS TweakUI - Freeware
> Windows XP - crap(stick with Windows 2000 - its the stable version, like
> v4.10)
Which is a program that is not installed by default in the operating system
you seem to like so much. It's also a program that bears a big, fat warning
about "things that can go wrong". It's a program that inexperienced users can
use to wreak havoc in any Windows installation with a few clicks.
But most importantly, it's a program that you have to know about before you
can use it, you have to know how to install, how to run and what to tweak
with.
This is not very different from what you accuse FreeBSD about ;-)
> - as for automounting, I think you are confusing this with AutoRUN for CD's
> AFAIK - you cannot disable automounting of Floppys/CD in Windows 2000
Yes. When you insert a floppy disk it immediatelly becomes available to
anyone who uses the machine. How very secure ;-)
> > > - installable YES, configurable ... you've got to be shitting me :o
> >
> > Not really. But even if we provided examples of this configurability
> > you wouldn't accept them as valid examples because they wouldn't be
> > point and click on some wimpy dialog-based wizard, right?
>
> Right
I think this is going to be my last post on the topic. There's not much point
after this particular answer to discuss anything.
> > Windows 2000 GUI is faster than windowmaker? Now that's news.
>
> Don't know what to tell you... it IS on my box... either my Windows 2000
> setup is good(likely) or my BSD setup is wrong(also likely)
Or both. They are not mutually exclusive.
- Giorgos
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