Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 05:39:16 +0200 From: Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Dos and Don'ts Message-ID: <19981007053916.36507@follo.net> In-Reply-To: <19981007123122.O27781@freebie.lemis.com>; from Greg Lehey on Wed, Oct 07, 1998 at 12:31:22PM %2B0930 References: <19981006071237.02443@follo.net> <19981006155341.C27781@freebie.lemis.com> <19981006083809.00946@follo.net> <19981007123122.O27781@freebie.lemis.com>
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On Wed, Oct 07, 1998 at 12:31:22PM +0930, Greg Lehey wrote:
> On Tuesday, 6 October 1998 at 8:38:09 +0200, Eivind Eklund wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 06, 1998 at 03:53:41PM +0930, Greg Lehey wrote:
> >> On Tuesday, 6 October 1998 at 7:12:38 +0200, Eivind Eklund wrote:
> >>> Dos and Don'ts of FreeBSD
> >>> -------------------------
> >>>
> >>> DON'T run pppd unless you either
> >>> (a) already have a working setup, or
> >>> (b) absolutely need the 2% reduction of CPU usage it will give
> >>> you.
> >>
> >> Why this? With all respect for Brian, I've found pppd to be more
> >> reliable.
> >
> > Because it often lead to a large amount of pain (in setup), especially
> > when somebody get the idea that they want to use NAT. In the cases
> > where there are problems with iij-ppp, my impression is it usually get
> > fixed pretty quickly (personally, I've never had a problem except when
> > I've been hacking the code myself, so I can't give more than a
> > second-hand impression).
>
> OK. I had to go through installing both in painful detail for my
> book. Everybody has always said "don't use Kernel PPP, it's painful",
> but I didn't find it so. In fact, the difficulty of installation is
> about equal. What *is* deficient is the documentation.
... and the lack of a term mode. When I set up ppp, I found this very
convenient, as I could trivially test that PPP worked in itself before
I had to make sure chat scripts etc worked.
[... sad story involving iij-ppp removed ...]
> I moved (quickly and painlessly) to kernel PPP, and since it works,
> I've been using it ever since. Note also that most PPP problems
> reported to -questions are for user PPP, not kernel PPP. This is
> almost certainly because most people try user PPP, but it does
> suggest that this rule is unnecessary.
The most severe problem is the introduction of NAT, which it seems a
large amount of people are doing. I regularly see people struggle
with setting up natd (due to lacking network understanding, mostly),
and people that have pppd running try to set up natd instead of
switching to iij-ppp. This is a shame, both because setting up natd
is a pain, and because natd will NAT wrongly for any packets coming
before with dynamic IPs are assigned (and this is non-fixable).
However, I'll remove the statement if you accept that I give your
phone-number to anybody that come asking me how to fix their problems
with setting up natd to run with their already setup pppd (this is not
more than two or three people each day so far) ;-)
Seriously: I see a _lot_ of users drop by #freebsd and asking for help
with this, which is why I included it. It was the one thing "This
_really_ don't work" which led to me starting the Do/Don't list.
> Basically, I think there are some things here that tend to the
> religious. How about this one:
>
> DON'T use vi or ee, use Emacs, the One True Editor. ee is wimpy, and
> vi is impossible to use.
>
> The sendmail/exim rule definitely belongs in the same category.
Yeah - I didn't include that one.
> >>> DON'T send questions about anything (beyond the exceptions noted
> >>> above) to any mailing list you are not a member of and have
> >>> read for at least two days.
> >>
> >> This sounds funny, like you want them to be a member and not have read
> >> it for two days.
> >
> > Is this better?
> >
> > DON'T send questions about anything (beyond the exceptions noted
> > above) to any mailing list you have not read at least two days
> > of traffic from. Yes, this implies you should be or have been
> > a member.
>
> I suppose so. We have a policy that non-members can post to
> -questions; how would you factor that in ("you're allowed to, but it's
> better not to").
The present text is
DON'T send mail to any of the FreeBSD mailing lists not listed above
(plus freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org) before you have read the
mailing list you're thinking of mailing for at least a couple
of days. Which types of mail that is OK for which list varies
a lot, and it take a little while to pick up the 'culture'
(even when you've read the charters).
with freebsd-questions, freebsd-multimedia, freebsd-hackers,
freebsd-isdn, and freebsd-security listed in the item above (with
descriptions of when they can be used).
Eivind.
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