Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 08:34:11 EDT From: "stan deese" <eseed1st@hotmail.com> To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Follies Message-ID: <F210GxB9hBGtpxWcBHr0000084c@hotmail.com>
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<html><DIV> <DIV> <DIV>Hi folks </DIV>10/10/2000 <DIV></DIV>Be forewarned this may be the first chapter of a book. I'm writing this to relay some of the adventures (pitfalls) I've had with freebsd. Most of this is from memory, so please don't look for absolute accuracy in anything. My memory isn't just clouded, by both residual (illegal), and current (legal) drugs, it's jaded also, so some things I choose not to remember. <P>Briefly, in '81? I bought my kids an Apple II+, cause I knew the wave was coming. The thing would only stick an A: on the screen. What did I do? I dove into BASIC, DOS, and the bunch at HARDcore. The steps to hacking had been taken, and I was hooked. Later a C64, then, with 286, a pc. By then laws had been passed, banks were being plundered. Me being a family man, I hung up the wardialer. Kept on at my "real" job, and occasionally stopped by the computer shop. I ran across WINDOWS.286, and have had a windows platform since. </P> <DIV></DIV> <P>I'm getting old, I'm overweight, I'm VERY tired, wet, cold, hungry, broke, ugly, etc., ad nauseum. Due to injury, I'm racked with pain, stress, and high blood pressure. Hence the current drugs. ASIDE from all of that, I really don't feel good. </P> <P>A while back boredom "really" set in. I thought I would look around for something better than windows to entertain me. DL'd BEos, this has to be good, it's called from windows. It trashed my windows drive to the point I had to format. Ftp'p Redhat, anaconda bailed out with errors right after fips. Next I start looking at FreeBSD, everything I read is great! This has to be the one for me. I fumble around in ftp, find the files and start the transfer on 56k. The remaining time says 373 days, or something like that, finally getting down to 2 or 3 days. I say no way! </P> <DIV></DIV>I called my isp and ordered DSL. Now I'm getting the speed I feel I deserve! Grabbed the files (4 Hours or so), made the flops and started install. All went great until I startx. Nothing but a grey screen. Tried everything I could figure out. Grey screen. Glitch in the files I say, <DIV></DIV> <P>I'll try again. This time I get the iso image, can't go wrong, right? Burn the cd and boot, nothing. The file size on cd is 20 megs short of the file size on ftp. Ftp again, this time it works. Clean boot, all goes smooth. I've now got video and everything! Except all the files I can't seem to find. </P> <P>Next day. I start up, thinking today I'm going to get into bsd, and find out what all the hoopla is about. What I really get is "write timeout on ads1 resetting", FOREVER! Stan, pal, something ain't right here, it's time for a trip to the bookstore. It can't all be my fault, all I did was install the stuff. So I take a couple of pills, and stumble off to the mall. </P> <DIV></DIV> <P>I find Mr. Lehey's book, the Complete FreeBSD, cd's and all. Perfect. While flipping through I see references to PERL. I grab PERL for Dummies. Before I get to the checkout I happen on Mr. Anderson's, UNIX Secrets. Gotta have that one, it's obvious I need the secrets, since no one else is telling them. Armed with $100 worth of books and fresh cd's I stumble back home.</P> <P>The obvious place to start is with Greg's book, so I commence to read. The book is full of great information. The problem is that Mr. Lehey is a programmer, and the book is written like a program. (Don't get mad Greg, I'm just telling a story. :-)) (jmp)For more info on this see chapter 12, (rsrgt)for more on that see page 622, (call)be sure to check the ERRATA @freebsd.org. To say I've lost my page is an understatement! ROFL </P> <DIV></DIV> <P>Anyway, I feel I've read enough to at least install again. I start clean, with the drive (8g seagate) freshly dos formatted, boot from the new cd, and go. This lasted until the disk prep & pkg add was to start. There the system froze. So I brainstorm, and decide to boot from the cd (4.4), and install from the hard drive 4.1 files. It actually worked until I tried to reboot. All the errors in the known computer world flashed on my screen. What do you do? You call and order a new computer. Mammy's been wanting her own computer for some time now, she NEEDS it so she can play backgammon & hearts at Excite. This K62-500 should suffice, shouldn't it? Besides,I want an Athlon. So I order a barebones Athlon 800 w/128m & 20g wd. In the meantime...... </P> <P>I call BSDI and start asking stupid questions, because I don't know the smart questions. You can only get the right answer to the right question, right? Remember, I've been a windows guy for a long time, and that's like doom, when you figure out the maze, you don't need any help. </P> <DIV></DIV>I was lucky (finally), and got Chris. He walked me through on recovering from the crash. Ran fsck interactively, (through fixit I think) which I haven't been able to do again. And got me back running. It seems there was a problem with the drive, and this line "sysctl -h atamodes= pio,pio,pio,pio" fixed it. Makes sense to me! Problem was that he didn't tell me how to keep the line. Called again and he told me where to put it.;-) (Thanks Chris) <P>My new computer is here! During the unpacking and taking stock, trying to figure out what I wanted in this new machine, another great revelation came on me! Mammy doesn't need a 20g drive to play hearts & net chat with mom. I'll just stick windows on the 8g, swap with her and she'll never know the difference. Right? </P> <DIV></DIV> <P>Now I'm set. New stuff, 2 20g's, cd, cdrw, bubblejet, laser, and dsl. Fans all over this box! Sounds like a mainframe room. New install again. Perfect, but I still can't find a lot of files. Like Netscape. I've been lurking on the lists, and saw a lot about buildworld. So I start reading the man pages about it. There's a lot to read, the only solution is to print the stuff. I'd never remember it all. BUT I can't print! I don't have the printer setup. </P> <P>Back to windows & on to .org, and I print. I print build??????, for a while, link to make & print there for a while. May as well print printer setup too. And, while I'm at it usb, dsl modems, (didn't find anything there)...... </P> <DIV></DIV> <P>Back to buildworld. I read the man pages, and followed the instructions. Didn't work. It stopped on some sort of permission thing. Read some more and did the chflg thing, started over & stopped again at the same place. I had something the good DR. Perlstein had put in the lists, and tried that. Didn't work either. Some directory doesn't exist. Now I'm thinking this build????stuff must have something to do with the files that aren't working so I've GOT to figure it out! I install again! After the 2nd attempt at build I couldn't reboot. With the new install I take DR. Perlsteins notes, and the man pages, and I think figured out what I should have done. All the builds completed, plus it will still boot. (If your reading this Alfred, xanax and sex are really good for irritability. :-)) </P> <P>Now, to this point in time one month has passed since I first started to "headbang" with FreeBSD. Have I learned anything? Probably not, but it's like having a new Apple all over again. My laser printer will now feed blank pages at will. I haven't even started trying to get the modem going. Mammy wants to know why her hard drive is so much "louder" than it used to be. I have Netscape on the desktop, but alas, all the text is in Japanese, and I really don't feel well enough to start on that too............. </P></DIV></DIV><p><hr>Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at <a href="http://www.hotmail.com">http://www.hotmail.com</a>.<p>Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at <a href="http://profiles.msn.com">http://profiles.msn.com </a>.<br></p></html> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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