Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 12:35:31 -0700 (PDT) From: <keith@mail.telestream.com> To: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@nwlink.com> Cc: "Frederick J Polsky v1.0" <fred@fredbox.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD guide for Linux admins Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10009121234050.26871-100000@mail.telestream.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.1000912114428.12665B-100000@utah>
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I could not agree with this more. Keith ================================= Keith W. At the helm <for better or worse> My non work related site www.cydonia.net ================================= On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Jason C. Wells wrote: > On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Frederick J Polsky v1.0 wrote: > > > I'm installing a FreeBSD box in the midst of a Red Hat shop; the other > > admins desire documentation on the differences between same. Might > > anyone know of a suitable link which has quick-n-dirty info on the > > administrative differences between FreeBSD and various Linucies or some > > sort of "FreeBSD for Linux admins" guide? > > No links here. > > You use a linux system just like any unix system really. It's the macro > scale where usage/administration diverge. There is some bias here. Read > through it to see what variations I observed between FreeBSD and Redhat. > > The biggest thing from an admin side is that FreeBSD doesn't have Sys V > init scripts. THANK GOODNESS. You actually have to give the command line > invocation to start processes and you have to ps and kill processes to > stop them. (Unless they are like apachectl.) If your admins are looking > for a script to start sendmail tell them, "Umm, 'sendmail -bd -q30' > works for me." ;) > > A HUGE issue during install is that Linux insists on using the DOS based > partitioning scheme. FreeBSD is utterly more flexible in this regard. > For a BSD only system there are none of the DOS fdisk limitations. If > your admins are trying to use things like extended DOS partitions, they > are not following the BSD mindset. (Obviously. this doesn't matter post > installation.) > > BSD doesn't have the 128MB swap partition limit. Consider this scenario. > You have 1024 MB of ram. You want 2048 MB of swap. That would take > sixteen linux swap partitions. If DOS sticks you with 15 total partitions > allowed, you are screwed, blued, and tatooed. (Maybe you could use swap > on another disc. This difference boggles my mind.) > > I, IMHO, think it is sacrilege to install a GUI based adminintration tool. > A couple books on Linux admin that I have seen depend utterly on things > like linuxconf. This may or may not apply to your audience. > > Another BIG thing IMO is that there are no "glibc version of the month" > issues. As a BSD-ite running Linux, this caused me great consternation > until I became apprised of how to deal with it. Just tell your peers that > they don't have to worry about library version in the base system. The > ports system handles glib issues well all by itself. > > And ports! Ports are a jewel. You install BSD using ports and packages. > Packages are merely the binary version of a port. A port is a source > version of a package. They both use the same administration tools. The > one thing I have seen that the ports system seems to lack is the ability > to _easily_ pick an arbitrary file from the disc and find out what > software depends on it. You can still grep the ports database for the > pattern that matches the file you are interested in to see what software > uses that file. > > Redhat will add a new group with each new users name by default. BSD will > not. No big deal, just be careful to check your user adds after your done > to see if they are what you expected. > > As a cultural issue, I think more BSD-ites build software from source > while more Redhat users install binary RPMs. > > Basically, the FreeBSD system feels more naked to me. Redhat felt more > covered up and insulated from the admin. Being who I am, I prefer naked > computing! :) > > Thank you, > Jason C. Wells > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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