Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 23:17:15 +0200 From: Nico Meijer <nico.meijer@zonnet.nl> To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Recommended reading: FreeBSD for production server use Message-ID: <20030716231715.6ac82143.nico.meijer@zonnet.nl> In-Reply-To: <200307161242.21245.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> References: <AD31C7ED267AD411B55500D0B781E33D065CCAC7@il33exm02.wes.mot.com> <200307161242.21245.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com>
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Hi David, > Try "Unix System Administration", from O'Reilly. It's a huge book but > it's very readable and covers FreeBSD. Thanks for the tip. I love huge books. It's what "vacation" is made for. > But it's not a "cookbook", in > that it won't give you recipes for success. You will need to apply the > > principles you've learned by yourself. After all, every system is > different. Indeed, but I'm sure there are documents/books on ways to keep a server running "current" / "stable" (I don't mean -CURRENT or -STABLE) that are (more) FreeBSD specific. Perhaps some real questions would clear things up. Let's say I run a production status FreeBSD 4.8 server. Do I track RELENG_4_8? Do I track -STABLE (RELENG_4, I believe)? (My bet is on RELENG_4_8) Let's say I use ports on that server. 'ports' has no cvs tag, as opposed to OpenBSD's ports system. Do I cvsup my ports tree regularly? If so, do I issue 'portupgrade -ar' every now and then? That, for instance, would upgrade my 'mod_php4' to version 4.3.3-RC1. Being "RC1", it is not intended for production use. OTOH, my Apache would now be a patchlevel 5, which would seem good to me, at first glance (didn't check what the changes were from p4). [For configuring and setting up Apache, I would read Apache docs and books. Maintaining Apache on FreeBSD is a somewhat different ballgame.] Let's say I run ipfw on that server? Will 'ipfw add check-state' and accompanying 'ipfw add allow tcp from [whatever] to me via [interface] port [number] setup keep-state' rules a) work (verified, it does) b) hold up under heavy network load? These are the types of questions I would like to see answered. Be it electronically or on paper. Ooh! My googling (they now officialy hate it when you say that ;-) turned up something: http://www.zenspider.com/Admin/Updates.html. Some more pointers. :-) I hope I clarified some. I'm generally not out for a FreeBSD reference per se (I currently don't care for running it on my workstation), I'm out for "(a) FreeBSD server reference(s)". Thanks a bunch... Nico P.S. I'm not looking for the answers here (even though they'd be appreciated), I'm looking for ways of finding the answers.home | help
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