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FreeBSD Based Live CDs
Newtonian_p writes "Now the BSD world has an answer to Knoppix. The FreeSBIE project have released a live FreeBSD based system on CD. There are also plans to develop a suite of programs to be used to create a personalized disk." If it offers a painless BSD install (the way Knoppix makes it easy to install Debian to a hard drive), this should be a popular project. Reader Cronopios links to a related effort called LiveBSD which "has heavily modified FreeSBIE's scripts to allow for apache mysql and many other programs to run."
The purpose of the live CD is not as your actual OS. It is used for testing the operating system to see if it works correctly with your hardware. I have also used P.H.L.A.K (A lighweight, hackery live CD also, like knoppix based on debian)for disaster recovery on windows systems. It works quite well.
Just seen it at blcds.com for sale, if anyone's interested
Now the BSD world has an answer to Knoppix
Err... This may be "Stuff that matters", but it shouldn't be "News for Nerds". FreeBSD has had live CDs since at least 2002.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Another FreeBSD-based live CD is BSDeviant.
I might be biting a troll here.. but you can install Knoppix.
Just open up a console, su, and run "knx-hdinstall". Its "just" a shellscript, so you can browse while installing. After install you get a Debian Sid system.
Yes, it was a pain in the ass when I tried it on old hardware(p1). Of course i am a total newbie as far as the BSD's, I'm well aware that many install them on old hardware for use as routers. However, I can defintly say that I found BSD's to be more difficult then Linux on obsolete hardware. Maybe its easy once you know what you're doing.
once you go slack, you never go back
You can indeed install it -- the result is a kind of Debian-lite installation. It's probably better to install real Debian once Knoppix has led the way; installed Knoppix has some quirks, such as a tendency to read things from the CD image on the HD now and then.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I found the NetBSD disklabel tool difficult to use, so I used OpenBSD to slice my disk. But other than that, no I agree, the BSD'es are very easy to install.
OpenBSD is wonderfully easy to install.
...the FreeBSD LiveCD wasn't mentioned.
It's the older FreeBSD LiveCD around, a project carried by the Brazilian FreeBSD User Group.
Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)
http://people.su.se/~jj/FreeSBIE-1.0-i386.iso.torr ent
-- I'm as unique as everyone else.
> I enjoy playing with LiveCDs, but I always find that we are not taking advantage of the writing ability of many CD drives.
[...]
> If I download a neat application and install it or save a word doc in my directory, I want it automatically cued up to be burned when I shutdown.
First, most LiveCD systems are already packed to the brim, and don't allow you to unmount you're main CD during operation, so you'd need at least two drives. Second, there are two ways to add files to a cd-rw: multisession and packet writing. Multisession is widely supported, but not suitable for small files as there is a overhead of about 15MB for each new session. Packet writing requires the UDF filesystem. AFAIK, neither Linux nor FreeBSD have good UDF support in read-write mode, and I'm not sure if anyone is actively working on it.
A much better bet would be a LiveCD in conjunction with USB flash memory for your personal files. If you want to install apps, the new version of the SLAX-Live CD supports ovlfs (Overlay Filesystem), which lets you insert files on a read-only root filesystem. For FreeBSD, unionfs might do the trick.
I found OpenBSD so easy, it was virtually painless.
1. Burn floppy
2. Insert floppy into old hardware (in this case, a 486 DX4 100), reboot machine
3. OpenBSD boots from floppy. Asked me if I want to Install, upgrade, or cancel. I chose (I)nstall
4. Asked me which hard drive.
5. Gave me fdisk like partition manager. Listed whole drive as c with one bit "a" FAT16 partition. I deleted "a," entered in the partitions I needed, with "b" being my swap by default. Did w,q to write and quit.
6. Asked me to set up network interface, root password, etc...
7. Asked me which install type, I set up ftp, I selected the mirror closest to me, selected the packages I wanted, and then waited for install to complete (20 min on cable modem).
8. I took out the floppy, rebooted, and got a login prompt.
9. Signed in as root, and heeded "afterboot" security warning.
Then I installed bash with a simple add_pkg command, added non-root user, set up pf, found apache was installed and set up by default, changed forwarding to "1", slapped pfctl and apachectl to run, and wala! Working router/NAT/webserver in less than an hour.
No need to pollute your machine. I develop a computer simulation (it started as a thesis project), so it has almost all the same requirements a modern game would have: 3-D graphics, sound, GUI, etc. I use wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) which gets me pretty much every feature I need. The best part is tha I can use the gcc cross-compiler to build the win32 target .exe from my Linux box. I then have friends of mine test the final windows .exe (after I do some preliminary testing through WINE).
I would assert that is better to develop the Win32 apps from linux than from win32. Especially since I don't have to worry about VS.NET flaking out on me, or the other crappy tools that are common on Windows.
Having used FreeBSD since 1999 or so for one reason or another, and having looked at several Linux distros, I'll throw in my 2cents.
FreeBSD looks like UNIX (oversimplification, albeit) down-and-dirty. I ran X on it for awhile (enlightenment or fvwm95 on a 486DX/66) and will never again. It really is not set up for a GUI, and you will do a ton of work getting it there. It will run Linux-compatible binaries provided you have the right libraries.
This is what I would use as the server because I am comfortable with it, and feel it is faster and more secure in this capacity. (I have little proof of the proceeding statement, but know there are thousands of benchmarks that prove me either right or wrong)
Linux distros I've tried range from pretty and trendy (Mandrake, Knoppix), to Windows clones (Lin---s, Licoris), to down-and-dirty UNIX type (Slackware). Mandrake would be my choice for the laptop and the development box because I just like the way it feels.
The FreeBSD live CD doesn't seem like anything more than an educational tool, because, IMHO, FreeBSD is supposed to be installed, customized, and left to what it does best, run server daemons. Check out linuxISO.org if you haven't already. It is a quick resource for information about a TON of different distros.
PERL:
All of the power of Voodoo with most of the understandibility!
the guys over at unixpunxhave a distrib that fits on a mini CD
I havent tried FreeSBIE so i would'nt know how easy or tough iut is to get a copy up or running.But what I do know is the getting a relatively standard box running FreeBSD is very ease. :
;-)
I would recommend all newbies who are trying out a unix OS for the first time to start with FreeBSD.There are a few reasons for this
1. The installer (sysinstall) is ver easy and self explanatory.
2. FreeBSD gives you a lot of options in terms of how you want to install and from where.It can even pick up a the installation from a dos partition.(from c:)
3. The documentation is amazing.You will love the handbook.All my questions about the installation were answered by the handbook itself, i had to look nowhere else.
4. For any non-standard issues theres a very active FreeBSD mailing list.
For all the above reasons,i think FreeSBIE should be even smoother than a normal FreeBSD install. Looking forward to givin it a spin, guess i dun have to try knoppix now
Lord of the Binges.
Neat concept, but definately rough around the edges. (Especially compared to Knoppix)
I am writing this from the Live CD using Firefox, so that at least says something. But here are some issues I ran in to: (Keep in mind I've never used FreeBSD before)
1. The Live CD doesn't boot properly on my system. After churning away for a while, it finally gets to the boot splash screen so I can't see what's going on. Then after hitting a few keys I got to the console and it displayed an error:
Mounting Root from cd9660:acd0
Root Mount Failed: 5
mountroot>
Using a little trial and error I was able to get the boot process to continue by typing:
cd9660:cd2
It appears that the Live CD got confused along the way as to what CD drive is which. I have two IDE-attached and one SCSI-attached CD devices in my machine.
2. I was presented with screens to select my KB Language and Layout. No biggie here, but just more interaction than Knoppix requires.
3. At the end of the boot process, I was presented with a root console prompt, and the tail end of a list of 10 items. I couldn't figure out how to scroll up the screen to read the list. PageUp, Shift + PageUP, + PageUP... I tried a bunch.
4. One of the last items in the list explained how to get into X (by typing xinit). So I got into X with XFCE fine. But the refresh rate is 60Hz and I fear my eyes are going to start bleeding pretty soon.
5. XFCE has auto-hide toolbars on the top and bottom of the screen. I find these quite distracting.
That's about it so far. It's neat to be able to play around with an OS that lives on a CD, but I'm wondering how useful this project is. Knoppix is a slick way of showing what a free non-MS operating system can do. Pop in the CD, boot it up, and you'll end up in a nice graphical interface with programs to try out. Plus it's extremely handy to use as a "rescue" CD for systems whose operating systems will not boot for various reasons.
But where does FreeSBIE fit in? As a rescue CD for those who know BSD well but not Linux? To show off how FreeBSD can almost be as nice a desktop as as Linux (Knoppix)? If FreeBSD is aimed as a server OS ("The Power To Serve"), how useful is a Live CD?
I don't mean to sound too negative here. It does seem like a neat project. I'm just failing to see its niche.
Maybe back in 1999 your rant holds true, but no more today. X and WindowMaker run happily on my little P133 laptop, and it took minimal effort to set up. Linux binary compatibility is a breeze to set up, I had UT2003 running (not on my laptop, of course) and fragging away.
Next time you run the FreeBSD sysinstall, take a little more time and pay more attention.
"Hu, ho, ho-ah-oh-oh-oh. Hu, ho ho-ah-oh-oh-oh. Mario Paint! Whoaaa!"