FreeBSD - yay/nay?

[Kaido]

Looking at picking up a small mini-ITX system for file serving purposes. Is FreeBSD a good way to go? Just want something stable & simple. Done Linux before but I kinda want to try something new. Should I go for it?

 

[Talcite]

try FreeNAS. It's written on freeBSD, and it's got all the features you'd probably ever want. No need to go reinventing the wheel here.

 

[kobymu]

Originally posted by: FreeNAS
The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.

Isnt M0n0wall based on openbsd?

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: kobymu

Originally posted by: FreeNAS
The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.

Isnt M0n0wall based on openbsd?

It says they're based off freebsd on m0n0wall's website.

m0n0wall is based on a bare-bones version of FreeBSD, along with a web server, PHP and a few other utilities.

edit: btw, what Talcite mentioned seemed exactly what you need.

 

[kobymu]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
It says they're based off freebsd on m0n0wall's website.

For some obscure reason I was sure that m0n0wall's based on OpenBSD, funny my.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Talcite
try FreeNAS. It's written on freeBSD, and it's got all the features you'd probably ever want. No need to go reinventing the wheel here.

Wow, that's awesome, thanks man!

 

[Hyperblaze]

Freebsd is wicked. I love it.

Good for a file server and many other things.

 

[skyking]

The big seller of barebones setups like freeenas is the ability to run it off a flash drive and just add storage disks.
Unless you have some disk or resource constraints, I would go the full freebsd install with whatever applications you need for your NAS. That will open up the entire range of ports, appliations, and documentation in the freebsd community.

 

[manlymatt83]

Originally posted by: Hyperblaze
Freebsd is wicked. I love it.

Good for a file server and many other things.

Agreed!

 

[Robor]

Come on n0cmonkey. I know it's the weekend but this is a BSD question. Is your pager malfunctioning or something?

 

[Hyperblaze]

Originally posted by: Robor
Come on n0cmonkey. I know it's the weekend but this is a BSD question. Is your pager malfunctioning or something?

he likes openbsd

 

[djdrastic]

Yeah It's Great , But there are 2 big stumbling blocks for me with freebsd


1)It still doesn't support FAT32 volumes over 32GB
2)Although portupgrade has made it easier to maintain and update ports , its still a bit of a pain to upgrade to a newer version with make buildworld/installworld and mergemaster . Granted I am talking about the 5.X series , and hav not yet done the effort to see whether upgrading 6.X range fbsd's are easier.

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: djdrastic
Yeah It's Great , But there are 2 big stumbling blocks for me with freebsd


1)It still doesn't support FAT32 volumes over 32GB
2)Although portupgrade has made it easier to maintain and update ports , its still a bit of a pain to upgrade to a newer version with make buildworld/installworld and mergemaster . Granted I am talking about the 5.X series , and hav not yet done the effort to see whether upgrading 6.X range fbsd's are easier.

That's easy, just make 32GB or less FAT32 volumes -- the FAT32 spec is limited at 32GB anyways. Same with DOS/WIN

 

[djdrastic]

Yeah but my RHEL boxes don't have that limitation

 

[kamper]

He's making a file server. Why would he care about fat32?

 

[skyking]

Originally posted by: kamper
He's making a file server. Why would he care about fat32?

disk migration. I have mounted other storage disks from win servers in a freebsd box, for easy migration. Of course, it has to be fat32 for writing. If you mount an NTFS disk, you can then copy the contents over to another drive in the box.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: skyking

Originally posted by: kamper
He's making a file server. Why would he care about fat32?

disk migration. I have mounted other storage disks from win servers in a freebsd box, for easy migration. Of course, it has to be fat32 for writing. If you mount an NTFS disk, you can then copy the contents over to another drive in the box.

Seems to me it'd be almost as easy to do over the network, and then you don't have to use an outdated filesystem on your server.

 

[skyking]

easy yes, speedy no
I mount the old drives, grab off and re-arrange the data on new drives, and retire them.

 

[Nothinman]

1)It still doesn't support FAT32 volumes over 32GB

Reading or creating? AFAIK the only OS limited in FAT support in any way was XP and that was just creating, it'll still read >32G FAT volumes just fine.

the FAT32 spec is limited at 32GB anyways. Same with DOS/WIN

No it's not, MS added that limitation in XP to push NTFS.

2)Although portupgrade has made it easier to maintain and update ports , its still a bit of a pain to upgrade to a newer version with make buildworld/installworld and mergemaster . Granted I am talking about the 5.X series , and hav not yet done the effort to see whether upgrading 6.X range fbsd's are easier.

Yea, ports sucks compared to apt and even yum.

 

[n0cmonkey]

FreeBSD's fine.

FAT32 is not.

Ports rock. Apt is for weenies.

 

[Nothinman]

Apt is for weenies.

Ah, so you don't like it because you're a eunuch?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Apt is for weenies.

Ah, so you don't like it because you're a eunuch?

No, it's because I know what they make hotdogs out of. :disgust:

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Ports rock. Apt is for weenies.

Ports may be fine for people who want to build their own software, but they're downright idiotic for people that just want to install and run the software. Ports are one of the things that turned me off most about freebsd.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: kamper

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Ports rock. Apt is for weenies.

Ports may be fine for people who want to build their own software, but they're downright idiotic for people that just want to install and run the software. Ports are one of the things that turned me off most about freebsd.

Yeah, because packages don't exist.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Yeah, because packages don't exist.

Oh, I'm sure there are much better ways then what I was up to. But ports seemed to be where all the newb documentation in the handbook was steering me so I went with it for a while. Could I simply have not installed the ports tree and just read "man pkg_add" and been on my way?