Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 23:44:17 -0800 From: "Dan O'Connor" <dan@jgl.reno.nv.us> To: "Francis @ TL" <francis@cyberway.com.sg>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Help on FreeBSD (2.2.5) Lite Based 32-bit OS Message-ID: <003501be5724$aa013e80$a03ce4cf@danco.home>
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From: Francis @ TL <francis@cyberway.com.sg> >hi, > >I have some questions regarding the use of FreeBSD : > >Questions : >1. List all the default partitions during the installation. If you mean MS-DOS FDISK-style partitions (which UNIX calls slices) then the number of partitions can vary depending on whether or not you have multiple operating systems installed (multi-boot). If you mean UNIX partitions (which exist within a slice, or FDISK partition), usually, there are at least four partitions on the system disk: one each for / (root), /var, /usr, and swap. Sometimes people put /var under /usr to pool disk space, in which case the disk will have 3 partitions. Sometimes people will add other specific partitions for various reasons. >2. What are the purposes for these partitions? The root partition (/) is home to the main operating system files. The swap partition is used to provide "virtual memory." /var usually contains varying, transient or otherwise temporary data such as spool and log files. The /usr filesystem is (mostly) everything else, including binary files that aren't strictly a part of the OS, and user files. >3. What are the consideration and How to calculate the size for these partitions? A typical size for / (root) is 32 MB. I use 128 MB for swap (4x physical RAM). And my /usr is all the remaining disk space. >4. Where are all the system log files? Usually under /var/log/. >5. Which one is the main program file and where is it for FreeBSD?? (ie. In DOS, command.com is the OS program) Ummm, COMMAND.COM is *NOT* the operating system in MS-DOS. It's simply a shell to allow the user to interact with IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS, which *ARE* the operating system. That's why you can replace COMMAND.COM with other shells, such as 4DOS. Of course, under Windows, IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS (which under Win95/98 is a text-based configuration file, not a binary file) get deactivated when the Windows files KERNEL.EXE, GDI.EXE and USER.EXE are loaded. Anyhow, FreeBSD (and UNIX, in general) allows you to pick from several shell programs with which to interact with the operating system. The actual "main program file" is /kernel. But most user commands are separate programs. >6. How to check the bootup time for the server? I'm not sure what you mean here, but I'd use a stopwatch :-) An informal time trial shows that on my Pentium 90 machine, FreeBSD boot about a minute quicker than Windows 98 does on my P166 machine. >7. How to check whether a process or program is running? I'd use the 'ps' command. >8. How to check the disk usage? Try 'du' (usage) and 'df' (free space remaining). >9. How to monitor the memory usage? >10. How to monitor the CPU usage? The 'ps' command will give you a snapshot of memory and CPU usage for each process. There is software you can use to do live-action monitoring. In X-Windows, you can even get little icon-like real-time graphs, ala Norton System Doctor. >11.Is there anyway I can uninstall FreeBSD without having to format the hard disk? Well, since the UNIX disk format is different than, say, MS-DOS or Windows NT, you'd probably want to reformat. If you install FreeBSD on a machine along with other operating systems (a multi-boot) machine, you can reformat the FreeBSD partition without disturbing the other OS's. You'll find much more info at http://www.freebsd.org/, specifically the FAQ (http://www.freebsd.org/FAQ/FAQ.html) and the Handbook (http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/handbook.html). Also, I highly recommend Greg Lehey's book "The Complete FreeBSD," available from Walnut Creek CDROM at http://www.cdrom.com/. Good luck! --Dan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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