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Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 07:42:00 -0600
From: Nate Williams <nate@sri.MT.net>
Message-Id: <199606201342.HAA09496@rocky.sri.MT.net>
To: Randy DuCharme <randyd@nconnect.net>
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Missing Memory & shrinking drives
In-Reply-To: <31C89007.41C67EA6@nconnect.net>
References: <31C89007.41C67EA6@nconnect.net>
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> Greetings,
>      I noticed that when booting my 2.1 release machine the following...
> 
> FreeBSD Boot @ 0x10000: 639/64512k of ram
> .
> .
> .
> a little farther down --->
> 
> BIOS basemem (639k) != RTC basemem (640k)
> .
> .
> .
> 
> Is this due to BIOS issues (ie: Pentium plug&play bios extensions,
> etc.),

It's a motherboard BIOS issue.  Your board reserves 1K of memory
(probably for the IDE BIOS settings) which is fairly common, but it
claims to have 640K free in the first block.  It's not a problem though.

> How does FreeBSD handle the presence of the various types of viruses.
> Is it similar to the way NT handles them??  Are there any anti-virus
> utilities available for FBSD?

1) Unix processes aren't allowed to touch another process, so virus's
   basically "don't exist".
  
2) It would be difficult to obtain a Unix virus given a source-code only
   system.

3) Given the lack of pre-packaged binary software that comes from
   outside vendors the chances of getting a virus are slim to none.
   If/when FreeBSD becomes *really* popular this might become an issue,
   but it isn't one yet.
  
 
However, some vendors would lead you to believe that virus exist on
every system, so you must spend a gazillion dollars on their
virus-protection software.  Don't bother.

> I noticed that I've nearly exhausted the 700MB that I've set aside on
> the drive for FreeBSD. df shows capacity at 100% and -2363 Avail (how is
> this possible?) yet it still shows a few 512-blocks left.  I've pretty
> much installed everything that I'm going to use.  What can I "SAFELY"
> delete to free a little space.  I've deleted a large number of items in
> /usr/ports.  

You can probably delete *all* of /usr/ports unless you plan on
re-installing things, and I'd start looking at deleting some ports that
you don't plan on really using.  You can always download them and
re-install again (or stick the CD in the drive and re-install).



Nate