Subj : Rants & Raves: Followup...
To   : Tobias Ernst
From : Lawrence Garvin
Date : Sun Apr 22 2001 01:19 pm

* Reply to a message in PERSONAL.

Tobias wrote to Lawrence at 17:36 21 Apr:

 TE> Hallo Lawrence!

 LG> My primary purpose in building this system was for DNS and 
 LG> sendmail. I didn't get DNS or mail presented to me in the 
 LG> 'configure your network options' dialogs.. so I assumed those 
 LG> weren't features of the core system.

 TE> DNS and mail are obviously not needed to get the system onto the
 TE> disk, so the install program does not ask you for it.

Yet they ARE installed as part of the core system. Understand the semantics of 
my point. I only was able to "select" BIND and SENDMAIL -after- I went through 
the process of installing packages.

The BIND and SENDMAIL were already on the system. I merely 'enabled' them. 

 LG> I spent an hour searching through the list of packages and 

 TE> Wrong place. This is BSD man - do you really think that BIND 
 TE> (***Berkeley*** internet name daemon) is not part of the core OS?
 TE> ;-)

Maybe.. :-)

 TE> Sendmail is also there, but I have become accustomed to using
 TE> postfix from the ports instead. I can get sendmail up and running
 TE> if necessary, but I don't understand the configuration file well
 TE> enough to easily fix problems if they occur, so I rather use
 TE> another tool which I can understand. :-) 

Ahhh.. I've been doing sendmail for about 6-7 years now.

 LG> find out after I completed that installation process, that the 
 LG> 'enable' sendmail and DNS options were on a subsequent screen.

 TE> Oh, really?

Yep.

 TE> Well, you'd best forget about the installation program the sooner 
 TE> the better. It's good for getting the system on disk for the first 
 TE> time, but for all other purposes there are better ways to achieve 
 TE> your goal.

Thanks for the tip. :-)

 TE> Enabling standard Unix servers (like mail, dns, and others) is 
 TE> usually a task of editing /etc/rc.conf. You can look at 
 TE> /etc/defaults/rc.conf to see what swithes can be used in 
 TE> /etc/rc.conf. Also, most things are explained in great detail in 
 TE> the FreeBSD handbook. You can find that one in 
 TE> /usr/share/doc/handbook. 

Actually, I'm fairly comfortable working with the raw config files on a system. 
I've generally avoided the 'vendor-supplied' admin utilites, in favor of going 
straight to the source.

However, since this was my /first/ FreeBSD box, and I was looking to do 
something very simple with it, I was more interested in expediency, rather than 
hacking. 

Actually, to answer the earlier question: Yes, I did /expect/ that BIND and 
SENDMAIL would have been part of the core installation -- but was confused when 
the core installation mentioned nothing about them. Note that I did get asked 
about NIS and NFS -- but not BIND and SENDMAIL. 

 LG> I'm considering 'rewriting' that documentation and contributing 
 LG> it -- we'll see how the free time goes. I'm fixin' to do this 

 TE> I'm sure you'd be welcome to do this. :-)

I'll put that on the same list with contributing to the Husky docs. :-)

 TE> FreeBSD just has more hardware support and more ported software on 
 TE> Intel.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the available hardware and packages.

As mentioned in an earlier message, the system is actually running on a 
Kingston Realtek 10/100 card.. not my choice of cards by a long shot.. but it 
serves the purpose. The mere fact that a boot floppy image supported that card 
for an FTP install is pretty impressive.

 TE> And if I'd really like separation, I could as well set up 
 TE> /usr/private for my privately compiled stuff or something. :-)

That you could... or.. gasp!.. something like /home/tobias ??? :-)

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