I have been holding off writing about my FreeBSD experience until my system was fully implemented. Now it is, so here we go.
I shut down my Slackware server 5 days ago for the last time. Since it was down anyway, I took the opportunity to blow all the dust out and reseat the cables and cards, check fans, etc. Then I started the FreeBSD installation.
Installation was definitely friendlier than OpenBSD's, but not super refined like SuSE's. In fact, it was very close to the Slackware installer, which suited me just fine.
Immediately after installation, the first priorities were LDAP authentication and Samba. Both went smoothly using the Ports collection along with my LDAP backup and old smb.conf file. I was pleased to see that there were also PAM_LDAP and NSS_LDAP ports.
After this, I started juggling around data to reformat my drives as UFS. As it worked out, I had about 80GB of data spread over 2 80GB drives, so I simply copied everything to 1 drive, used my 15GB and 1 80GB drive for installation, then copied everything from the remaining ext3 drive back to the other 80GB drive and completed the formatting. This actually took a really long time, as you would imagine when copying 80GB of data.
The next day, I installed dhcpd and Bind9 from the Ports collection and set them up as they were before. I like using Webmin for setting these things up. I do like text config files, but I rarely remember syntax for dhcpd and bind since I don't usually tinker with them once they are set up.
At this point, the system was providing all of the essential services that the Slackware box was providing, except pop3, which was more just a convenient way to recieve system reports and whatnot.
Over the next couple of days I made minor changes to my backup scripts to make them work with FreeBSD, and I installed Qmail in place of Sendmail. I struggled with pop3 access at this time and after recieving about 20 "authentication failed" messages, gave up for the day.
This brings me to yesterday, when I tried googling "checkpassword pam." Checkpassword is the program that qmail uses to authenticated pop3 users. I knew the problem was related to my LDAP authentication, and the Google results confirmed this. I immediately learned about checkpassword-pam, go figure. I checked the Ports collection for it, and to my surprise, it had been there all along.
I installed it, modified my qmail startup script to call checkpassword-pam instead of checkpassword, and immediately it worked :)
I would recommend FreeBSD to anyone. This whole experience has been great, and for me, the use of PAM gives FreeBSD a slight edge over Slackware.
Now, reflecting on this past few days, I clearly see the importance of planning. Prior to shutting down Slackware, I made a list of all the services I needed, and even mirrored my whole installation to the 80GB storage drive so that I could retrieve any config files I would need.
Use pen and paper to plan a specific order in which you install and configure services, format drives, backup data.
This can help you make sure you get the most essential issues taken care of it the shortest amount of time, worrying about the smaller things later.
It worked for me, and now I am a happy FreeBSD user :)
12/23/04: A New Fan of FreeBSD
I have been holding off writing about my FreeBSD experience until my system was fully implemented. Now it is, so here we go.
I shut down my Slackware server 5 days ago for the last time. Since it was down anyway, I took the opportunity to blow all the dust out and reseat the cables and cards, check fans, etc. Then I started the FreeBSD installation.
Installation was definitely friendlier than OpenBSD's, but not super refined like SuSE's. In fact, it was very close to the Slackware installer, which suited me just fine.
Immediately after installation, the first priorities were LDAP authentication and Samba. Both went smoothly using the Ports collection along with my LDAP backup and old smb.conf file. I was pleased to see that there were also PAM_LDAP and NSS_LDAP ports.
After this, I started juggling around data to reformat my drives as UFS. As it worked out, I had about 80GB of data spread over 2 80GB drives, so I simply copied everything to 1 drive, used my 15GB and 1 80GB drive for installation, then copied everything from the remaining ext3 drive back to the other 80GB drive and completed the formatting. This actually took a really long time, as you would imagine when copying 80GB of data.
The next day, I installed dhcpd and Bind9 from the Ports collection and set them up as they were before. I like using Webmin for setting these things up. I do like text config files, but I rarely remember syntax for dhcpd and bind since I don't usually tinker with them once they are set up.
At this point, the system was providing all of the essential services that the Slackware box was providing, except pop3, which was more just a convenient way to recieve system reports and whatnot.
Over the next couple of days I made minor changes to my backup scripts to make them work with FreeBSD, and I installed Qmail in place of Sendmail. I struggled with pop3 access at this time and after recieving about 20 "authentication failed" messages, gave up for the day.
This brings me to yesterday, when I tried googling "checkpassword pam." Checkpassword is the program that qmail uses to authenticated pop3 users. I knew the problem was related to my LDAP authentication, and the Google results confirmed this. I immediately learned about checkpassword-pam, go figure. I checked the Ports collection for it, and to my surprise, it had been there all along. I installed it, modified my qmail startup script to call checkpassword-pam instead of checkpassword, and immediately it worked :)
I would recommend FreeBSD to anyone. This whole experience has been great, and for me, the use of PAM gives FreeBSD a slight edge over Slackware. Now, reflecting on this past few days, I clearly see the importance of planning. Prior to shutting down Slackware, I made a list of all the services I needed, and even mirrored my whole installation to the 80GB storage drive so that I could retrieve any config files I would need. Use pen and paper to plan a specific order in which you install and configure services, format drives, backup data. This can help you make sure you get the most essential issues taken care of it the shortest amount of time, worrying about the smaller things later. It worked for me, and now I am a happy FreeBSD user :)