# Farewell  FreeBSD!



## gkontos (Apr 27, 2013)

I suppose that the title speaks for itself. 

During the past last moth I have been involved in a major operation dealing with ~40 CentOS boxes that had to be moved to 12. Being a FreeBSD addict, junky,  gave me the opportunity to take the job and complete it. Yes, the strong foundations are there. Yes, if you manage many FreeBSD boxes you can deal with anything.

Seriously, I became involved with something that I had abandoned 10 years ago. I became so involved that I could not believe how much this had evolved. It made me wonder though.. 

How can I deploy so fast and so easy so many CentOS boxes and have them also get their packages centrally updated all within hours?

I will not even mention the word "virtualization". I think it is a foreign word in the BSD world.


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## pkubaj (Apr 27, 2013)

For the issues with package management, there's PKGNG ready to use now. For virtualization, there's only VirtualBox, but BHyVe is already merged to CURRENT.


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## Beastie (Apr 27, 2013)

I wish you all the best. Farewell.


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## sossego (Apr 27, 2013)

deleted


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## wblock@ (Apr 27, 2013)

Hope it works out for you.  If not, you're always welcome here!


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## zspider (Apr 27, 2013)

Good luck.

But I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you rediscover why you left Linux in the first place.


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## segfault (Apr 28, 2013)

zspider said:
			
		

> Good luck.
> 
> But I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you rediscover why you left Linux in the first place.



Agreed. Personally, there is never anything that rekindles my FreeBSD flame like a tour of duty on the Linux front line. 
See you soon!


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## cpm@ (Apr 28, 2013)

Hope you are fine with Tux & co.

Greets


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## hitest (Apr 28, 2013)

Best wishes in your new adventure.  CentOS is a solid distro.


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## gkontos (Apr 28, 2013)

Of course, you just can't abandon something that you have been enjoying for 10 years. And that would be a great pity. Yet as a strong FreeBSD advocate I feel that there is a whole forest behind this big tree and some of us, including myself, have been stacked in that tree. Please let me explain.

I have been following FreeBSD fanatically since 6.0-RELEASE. 8 years later in 9.1-RELEASE I am trying to find what has changed compared to the competition. The answer is a lot but the real question is what is the trend today, what do we need more or what are the possible competitive advantages that would make us choose FreeBSD.

The trend can be divided into two different categories:


Virtualization
Storages
I will start with Storages since I have been involved a lot lately. ZFS was marked production ready in FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE. Since then, a lot of things have changed that affected the future of ZFS. The acquisition of Sun from Oracle having the most impact. 

To make a long story short, a different group was created under the umbrella of Illumos, developing ZFS aside from Oracle. I was against that idea from the beginning because I always believed that the wheel should not be reinvented. We have now reached to a point that we have two different ZFS versions. 

Now, besides an engineer I am also an entrepreneur. My experience has taught me that large corporations that want to make money are willing to cooperate and/or fund large projects. Why? Because they get to use that technology in return. Therefore, FreeBSD could have benefit from that if only there was the right approach.

Back to the engineering path, we assembled two identical SMB servers, like the ones we often use, and we tested ZFS on Linux and ZFS on FreeBSD using Samba and AFP transfers. Same ZFS version and same hardware. The performance on the Linux (CentOS) box was always better to my surprise. We were trying to simulate a real world scenario where six clients would transfer data from and to the storage at the same time. It turned out that the Linux storage was able to complete the transfers 5-10% faster. Then, we did the same using Solaris11 ZFSv34. The performance increase was 30% compared to FreeBSD.

Point (2), virtualization. I honestly believe that KVM  has progressed so much that it is not even worth comparing it with anything else. If you add Cloudstack to the picture you get a full hybrid cloud infrastructure. Someone mentioned BHyVe earlier. Ask yourself this question, when will it be production ready and by the time it becomes production ready how far will the competition be?

Point (3), package management. It is very disappointing that even with PKGNG on the way I can't create a simple Wordpress installation.

Point (4), I don't understand why -STABLE is not being delivered over binary updates. Why can't we have 9.1.1, 9.1.2 for example. Why only security updates and not important binary patches that fix various errata issues?

This is not just someone (censored) complaining here for no reason. I care for FreeBSD and I would like to see the project advance. But we need to wake up, step away from the romantic view and face reality.

Best


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## NewGuy (Apr 28, 2013)

I believe @gkontos is right on the mark. FreeBSD has some great strengths, many of them in its clean design, but the mainline Linux distributions are vastly ahead on virtualization, almost on an even playing field with storage, well ahead on hardware support and quite a bit ahead with regards to package management. As much as I enjoy and appreciate FreeBSD it just can't compete head to head in most server/desktop situations.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Apr 28, 2013)

They may be ahead on hardware support, virtualization, possibly even package management, but I fail to see how that means FreeBSD cannot compete in most situations... Those are general areas, and when one gets down to specifics, IMHO FreeBSD has far greater potential awaiting, to be implemented sooner or later in each category... [ one or two exceptions I might think of, but not enough for one to get very concerned about if one does adequate research beforehand... ] ... in "most" situations; far from it. At least from this viewpoint, and I carefully read Linux forum posts daily to be sure that I am not missing any salient fact that makes the choice of FreeBSD rather than Linux for the desktop at least, unfounded.


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## caesius (Apr 28, 2013)

Fair point about packages, I don't know enough about your other issues.

I am getting sick of the FreeBSD camp's attitude of "no one even needs packages, deal with it".

Good luck.


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## Beastie (Apr 29, 2013)

caesius said:
			
		

> I am getting sick of the FreeBSD camp's attitude of "no one even needs packages, deal with it".


There's more to it than that.

If that was true they wouldn't have bothered developing a new binary package management system.

The real problem is that binary packages are not updated as frequently as many would want them to be, meaning that people refuse to use them, which in turn results in them being neglected even more.

As for the pkg_* utilities, they have been "neglected" for quite some time because
1) there are many third-party applications that can fill the void (updating, removing leaf packages, security auditing, etc.)
2) the pkg_* utilities will eventually be replaced (just like sysinstall was) so wasting resources on them is something the Project can't afford.

Hopefully all this will change with FreeBSD 10 and pkgng.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Apr 29, 2013)

This "they" is simply individual users, developers, contributors each contributing a share; to disparage their efforts without input directly to the relevant lists, or citing the exact sentences upon which the criticism is based, is unwarranted...

As far as the post directly above:
I mix packages and ports extensively, and cannot be enthusiastic about pkgng as of yet, relying extensively upon /var/db/pkg directories at the command line, [explained in detail elsewhere... the mailing lists for example.]


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## da1 (May 1, 2013)

All the best George. You have been a true help to many of us.

As a side note: I agree with the shortcomings of the FreeBSD OS that you mentioned and I fear that if things don't change quick, the OS will be so far behind, that many companies will see no reason to use it anymore.


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## drhowarddrfine (May 1, 2013)

The reason more people immediately choose Linux is cause they read about it on a forum somewhere and their friends all use it and not necessarily cause they studied the technical issues.


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## Remington (May 1, 2013)

I wish you the best.  I find many of your posts useful.  Linux and FreeBSD are two vastly different beasts.  You know FreeBSD is more concerned about stability and security while Linux is more concerned about bleeding edge stuff which is geared toward desktop users.  By the way, FreeBSD 10 will be ready for virtualization.  I'm more concerned about stability and security for my clients.


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## J65nko (May 1, 2013)

What @drhowarddrfine says is true in my case.

I ditched Windows 95 in spring of 1998 after buying a CD package with 5 different Linux distributions to try on my 486 machine. I even subscribed to Linux Magazine a few month later. But before my first issue of that magazine arrived (second class mail from USA to Netherlands) I already switched to FreeBSD which was featured a the Walnut Creek booklet that I received by mail.

One of my reasons to use FreeBSD was the excellent FreeBSD handbook.


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## blazingice (May 1, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Same ZFS version and same hardware. The performance on the Linux (CentOS) box was always better to my surprise. We were trying to simulate a real world scenario where six clients would transfer data from and to the storage at the same time. It turned out that the Linux storage was able to complete the transfers 5-10% faster. Then, we did the same using Solaris11 ZFSv34. The performance increase was 30% compared to FreeBSD.



I am not questioning your statement, but I am very surprised to read this.  Everywhere I read it is stated that ZFS performance is better in FreeBSD than in Linux. That is one of the reasons why I have decided to learn FreeBSD and not Linux. 

Nevertheless, I am enjoying the clarity of FreeBSD. It requires more reading but it is very satisfying.


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## Remington (May 1, 2013)

blazingice said:
			
		

> I am not questioning your statement, but I am very surprised to read this.  Everywhere I read it is stated that ZFS performance is better in FreeBSD than in Linux. That is one of the reasons why I have decided to learn FreeBSD and not Linux.
> 
> Nevertheless, I am enjoying the clarity of FreeBSD. It requires more reading but it is very satisfying.



Improving ZFS performance requires optimizing ZFS settings.  I've seen different results for both Linux and FreeBSD.  Solaris ZFS will remain better than these two.


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## blazingice (May 1, 2013)

Well, I am guessing we are talking about out of the box ZFS performance.

Ah Solaris - If only they provided free security updates.


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## fonz (May 1, 2013)

blazingice said:
			
		

> Ah Solaris - If only they provided free security updates.


You can blame Oracle for that (and for a few other things as well).


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## Remington (May 1, 2013)

fonz said:
			
		

> You can blame Oracle for that (and for a few other things as well).



Also can blame Oracle since illumos, FreeBSD, OpenIndiana, ZFSonLinux and few others now have forked ZFS.  If Oracle continued with free ZFS updates then we wouldn't have ZFS derivatives.  Since ZFS is becoming mainstream on Linux and FreeBSD platforms then Solaris will have much to lose. IMHO.


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## zspider (May 1, 2013)

Remington said:
			
		

> Also can blame Oracle since illumos, FreeBSD, OpenIndiana, ZFSonLinux and few others now have forked ZFS.  If Oracle continued with free ZFS updates then we wouldn't have ZFS derivatives.  Since ZFS is becoming mainstream on Linux and FreeBSD platforms then Solaris will have much to lose. IMHO.



I really wish Oracle would release at least zpool v30, if not the most recent version.


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## da1 (May 1, 2013)

zspider said:
			
		

> I really wish Oracle would release at least zpool v30, if not the most recent version.



Good luck with that.


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## zspider (May 2, 2013)

da1 said:
			
		

> Good luck with that.



Yeah, it's a crime. No crypto is a deal breaker for me. I'll be sticking with good old UFS2, I just need a way to ensure data integrity.


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## kpa (May 2, 2013)

Oracle is a good example of a company stuck in the way of thinking of the 1980s and 1990s where software was seen as the hot product that was your main cash cow by licensing it to interested parties with NDAs etc. for good money. Now this kind of thinking doesn't work anymore because nobody is willing to pay for just software because of competing free altenatives that many times outperform the original. A piece of software like ZFS is not a product by any definition anymore. If Oracle wants to stay in business with Solaris and ZFS they should start talking to other competing ZFS vendors and come to an agreement about an open standard for ZFS that everyone could then follow.


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## Crivens (May 2, 2013)

I think that Oracle has no vision of what hardware really is and means.

The deal for SUN was maybe like this : Spread the code, let it be known that our code is good, robust, ...

Show that Solaris/ZFS/... works best on SPARC

Sell more SPARC HW to people who already know and love our stuff.

Profit!

But if you think that hardware only comes from intel (think Office-compatible as a deal maker), then this does not work. How robust is that stuff? Have you ever seen some SUN servers giving up the ghost under load, when they were somewhat maintained/dusted/...? Not me. As the author of "Absolute FreeBSD" states, this kind of old dinosaur has it in common with it's wild roaming name givers that they can only be killed by a direct meteor strike. THAT was what SUN sold to customers, not some truckloads of shiny. And that is what Oracle may not get it's mind around.

But back on the topic:
Best wishes to you! And when you get fed up again you can always come back, because, no one ever really leaves


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## Remington (May 2, 2013)

Crivens said:
			
		

> Best wishes to you! And when you get fed up again you can always come back, because, no one ever really leaves



Once a FreeBSD addict... always a FreeBSD addict.  It'll take a lot to break the addiction.


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## gkontos (May 2, 2013)

A few months ago we started building our Petabyte storage which is currently located in a datacenter. It receives daily differential snapshots from many clients. We chose to use Supermicro servers and Jbod chassis.

You can't imagine the ordeal we had to go through! First of all, they were trying to sell us Nexenta. Even in simple questions their answer was we don't know if this is supported, we only support Nexenta. 

Eventually, they got an email from us saying that we are NOT going to use Nexenta. We are going to use FreeBSD. If you don't like it we will choose a different supplier.

My point is that companies often use aggressive marketing strategies to promote their products. Oracle does and many others do. FreeBSD is not a company in a sense of RedHat or Canonical. But even a project like FreeBSD can create proper marketing strategies to promote and survive the competition. 

Now, regarding ZFS performance in FreeBSD vs Linux. I am not so sure if the performance gain was due to ZFS alone or to the way Linux handles Samba and AFP connections. I have not run any intense application locally in order to get better results. 

Somebody also mentioned that people choose Linux because they read about it and their friends use it. Well, many people who own a smartphone use Linux. Media players use Linux. Embedded Linux is everywhere so yes people are more likely to  use it. 

But when it comes to large ISP's I don't see why they would choose CentOS over FreeBSD for their web servers. Unless they get more support from Linux. Support also includes, hardware compatibility, fast deployment and easy maintenance.


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## drhowarddrfine (May 2, 2013)

> Somebody also mentioned that people choose Linux because they read about it and their friends use it. Well, many people who own a smartphone use Linux. Media players use Linux. Embedded Linux is everywhere so yes people are more likely to use it.


I don't mean users. I mean businesses. Google started out using Linux cause they used it in school. My brother-in-law tried to get me to use Linux when I first started out cause, outside of Windows, that's all he heard of. Ask anyone what non-Windows OS they would use if they had to, the first thing they would say is Linux, but it's not likely they would choose it off the top of their head for any technical reason.


> But when it comes to large ISP's I don't see why they would choose CentOS over FreeBSD for their web servers. Unless they get more support from Linux. Support also includes, hardware compatibility, fast deployment and easy maintenance.


A lot of people want Linux for compatibility or support of some sort cause it supports 16,000 versions of whatever but you only need one. Out of those 16,000 network cards Linux supports, one can find the one card, motherboard, video driver, keyboard, mouse, monitor, software and on and on, that works just as well on FreeBSD. 

Just like apps on phones, one supports 32,000 apps while the other only has 20,000. It makes no difference if they both run the app I want. So I'll pick the phone, or OS, I want to use based on something else.

So using FreeBSD makes far more sense to me than Linux which I consider a hodge-podge of distributions which aren't interoperable among themselves. I installed CentOS on my new box because I took over a web site that's hosted on CentOS but that install didn't go the same as Linux Mint (I know it's not the same thing) which didn't install the same as Ubuntu which didn't work the same as ... None of them installed or worked the same as each other and least of all worked the same as FreeBSD. 

And then along comes systemd and Wayland.


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## zspider (May 2, 2013)

Remington said:
			
		

> Once a FreeBSD addict... always a FreeBSD addict.  It'll take a lot to break the addiction.



Hotel FreeBSD, you can check out, but you can never leave...


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## ShelLuser (May 2, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> How can I deploy so fast and so easy so many CentOS boxes and have them also get their packages centrally updated all within hours?


Funny thing because that's what I was thinking when I had setup my first 2 FreeBSD servers last week, my company is currently very busy in moving away from CentOS into a full conversion to FreeBSD.

Oh; the main usage of those servers is (website) hosting, so a very specific task.

Still, when I had setup CentOS in the first place I simply couldn't be bothered with setting up my own software repository because it took too much diskspace for my liking as well as quite some time to set it all up. So when I had to provision a second CentOS server I simply resorted to a default base system after which I let webmin sort out the rest of the stuff.

With FreeBSD I get the feeling it was made for redistribution. Because after I had setup my first server it became quite easy to build binary packages from my currently installed ports, and then provide those to my second FreeBSD server.

Right now its still something I'm in the process of building, I'm also looking into a dedicated backup server which I could also (ab)use for testing and setting up port updates which can then be redistributed to the other servers (thus minimizing downtime).

But even so; my experience is a bit the opposite I suppose. I was quite surprised at the sheer freedom I got when using the Ports collection. Especially the fact that a Port can never wreck havoc on the base system is a failsafe I really came to enjoy because on Linux that could be a very liable risk at times.


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## sossego (May 2, 2013)

deleted


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## fonz (May 2, 2013)

@@Sossego: I've changed your italic and red font to the [user] tag (no big deal, but I had the time to do it).

@@gkontos: You have contributed many useful posts to these forums, so I thank you for that and I wish you all the best. Hopefully we'll see you again some time.


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## gkontos (May 3, 2013)

ShelLuser said:
			
		

> Funny thing because that's what I was thinking when I had setup my first 2 FreeBSD servers last week, my company is currently very busy in moving away from CentOS into a full conversion to FreeBSD.



I am really happy that your company decided to move to FreeBSD. I only wish more companies did the same. If I may ask, what made you take this decision? 



			
				ShelLuser said:
			
		

> Oh; the main usage of those servers is (website) hosting, so a very specific task.



Absolutely! 



			
				ShelLuser said:
			
		

> Still, when I had setup CentOS in the first place I simply couldn't be bothered with setting up my own software repository because it took too much diskspace for my liking as well as quite some time to set it all up. So when I had to provision a second CentOS server I simply resorted to a default base system after which I let webmin sort out the rest of the stuff.



I used spacewalk for that and I was impressed on how reliable it is.



			
				ShelLuser said:
			
		

> With FreeBSD I get the feeling it was made for redistribution. Because after I had setup my first server it became quite easy to build binary packages from my currently installed ports, and then provide those to my second FreeBSD server.
> 
> Right now its still something I'm in the process of building, I'm also looking into a dedicated backup server which I could also (ab)use for testing and setting up port updates which can then be redistributed to the other servers (thus minimizing downtime).



What I do in those cases is to have a few virtual servers running FreeBSD. All they do is build ports into packages, world and kernel. Then I NFS export the relevant directories to the FreeBSD machines that require updates.

I also love the ports system and try not to use software that is not in the ports. Be sure that you read /ports/UPDATING  every time that you want to upgrade something. 



			
				ShelLuser said:
			
		

> But even so; my experience is a bit the opposite I suppose. I was quite surprised at the sheer freedom I got when using the Ports collection. Especially the fact that a Port can never wreck havoc on the base system is a failsafe I really came to enjoy because on Linux that could be a very liable risk at times.



True, ports do not affect the system binaries and you can't wreck your system accidentally. Also, the use of /local can be a life saver too. Never mix OS software and configuration with other software.


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## drhowarddrfine (May 3, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> True, ports do not affect the system binaries and you can't wreck your system accidentally.


Somehow I'll find a way. Not on purpose.


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## Beeblebrox (May 26, 2013)

Well @gkontos, last I read you were gone. Welcome back!


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## gkontos (May 26, 2013)

I have FreeBSD running in my veins.


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## ShelLuser (May 26, 2013)

Pardon my late response, I totally overlooked this thread. I sort of come and go on the forum; I usually post after or in the middle of a working day.



			
				gkontos said:
			
		

> I am really happy that your company decided to move to FreeBSD. I only wish more companies did the same. If I may ask, what made you take this decision?


It was a two folded decision. We were already in the preparation process of moving from one hosting provider to the other (we use several VPS environments). The main difference between the two was the way they provisioned the VPS servers.

The first provider basically let you pick "Windows" or "Linux" after which they set the whole thing up. The current provider on the other hand offered a larger selection of operating systems to chose from (Windows, several Linux distributions as well as FreeBSD and OpenBSD). Better yet: after selecting one you basically boot your VPS right into the installation process. So you can set it up exactly the way you want it.

I sort of noticed FreeBSD by accident and immediately recalled the stories I read on how Sun used to help several FreeBSD programmers by porting their ZFS filesystem over to FreeBSD. ZFS is a filesystem I hold in high esteem, I've worked with it for several years on Solaris, so the possibility to move back to a ZFS powered environment was very tempting.

The second part of the decision involved around webmin (and the Virtualmin extension); it's what we use to maintain the servers and websites hosted on them. I learned that Webmin also supported FreeBSD, so I setup a testing environment and started testing.

Although Webmin doesn't support FreeBSD in every way the basic functionality is there. You can easily setup websites, change some of their settings and more importantly: easily copy websites from one server to the other.

So once I had that out of the way the final decision was simple. A different operating system while still having the same functionality. And as expected; having ZFS back in production really helps to fully utilize the system.



			
				gkontos said:
			
		

> What I do in those cases is to have a few virtual servers running FreeBSD. All they do is build ports into packages, world and kernel. Then I NFS export the relevant directories to the FreeBSD machines that require updates.
> 
> I also love the ports system and try not to use software that is not in the ports. Be sure that you read /ports/UPDATING  every time that you want to upgrade something.


Thanks for the tip!  Yeah, UPDATING but also MOVED is important to keep track off, I sort of learned about that one the hard way


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## gkontos (May 26, 2013)

ShelLuser said:
			
		

> Although Webmin doesn't support FreeBSD in every way the basic functionality is there. You can easily setup websites, change some of their settings and more importantly: easily copy websites from one server to the other.



When I hear about control panels, I leave! I have literally left contracts because they decided to install a control panel. 

Webmin AFAIK is different because it does not interfere so much with the installation of your system.


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## ShelLuser (May 27, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> When I hear about control panels, I leave! I have literally left contracts because they decided to install a control panel.
> 
> Webmin AFAIK is different because it does not interfere so much with the installation of your system.


Indeed.

In general I totally agree with your opinion and actually feel the same way. But you're right; webmin _is_ different (and also why my company started using it). The thing is; most admin panels (here's looking at stuff like Plesk) enforce a (new) standard in the way you work. If you're used to vi to manually edit configuration files then you can forget about that; it no longer works because any manual changes will either be ignored or rewritten because the admin panel enforces a new standard.

I also tend to steer clear from stuff like that. It's also why I eventually started to dislike the SuSE Linux distribution even though it was one of the first I actually started to use more intensely "back in the days" (we're talking the 90's here); simply because it enforces a completely arcane way to setup several programs in comparison to other environments. For the sole reason to comply to its own GUI tools.

Webmin is indeed quite different. Not only did it fully grok (and import) my manually setup Apache configuration, it also allows us to have it both ways. If I need to apply a change to a customer website it's up to me how to do it: I can either logon to webmin and perform the changes there, or I logon to the server itself and change the Apache config file manually using vi.

For me webmin is the best of both worlds. We save time in setting up (or migrating) a customer website and any other related services (the main reason to use an admin panel) while at the same time we don't lose the flexibility to manually edit the configuration files.

It's not perfect mind you, on FreeBSD it has quite a few flaws (but who knows; maybe I can help out with that sometime). But the flexibility which it provides is something I haven't seen in other admin panels.


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## throAU (May 28, 2013)

Good luck with it.

The GNU userland drives me mad.  VMs I do on vSphere.  Surprised with the results you got from ZFS though.


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## _martin (May 30, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> A few months ago we started building our Petabyte storage which is currently located in a datacenter. It receives daily differential snapshots from many clients.



This seems to be interesting. Why did you refuse to use Nexenta? Was it the money or something more 'personal'? If it was money, why didn't you go for Illumos, etc.?

I'm just curious. If it comes to low-end storage I would prefer OpenSolaris based OS rather than FreeBSD. I love FreeBSD, but you have to _"choose a proper weapon for every battle"_.

What @@Remington said is actually true. There's something about FreeBSD that makes you come back.


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## gkontos (May 31, 2013)

matoatlantis said:
			
		

> This seems to be interesting. Why did you refuse to use Nexenta? Was it the money or something more 'personal'? If it was money, why didn't you go for Illumos, etc.?



It was the fact that we wanted to use an open source OS. If not we would have used Solaris. The IllumOS options are OpenIndiana and SmartOS. I believe that the community support in FreeBSD is much better.



			
				matoatlantis said:
			
		

> I'm just curious. If it comes to low-end storage I would prefer OpenSolaris based OS rather than FreeBSD. I love FreeBSD, but you have to _"choose a proper weapon for every battle"_.



First of all this is a very high end storage solution, involving a lot of hardware! The hardware criteria were FreeBSD support. Also, it is very difficult to find modern hardware that is more supported in OpenIndiana or SmartOS.



			
				matoatlantis said:
			
		

> What @@Remington said is actually true. There's something about FreeBSD that makes you come back.



Absolutely!


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## da1 (May 31, 2013)

Damn, just can't get rid of you


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## sossego (May 31, 2013)

FreeBSD said:
			
		

> You just don't love me anymore, @gkontos!



The shame of it all.


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## gkontos (Jun 1, 2013)

FreeBSD said:
			
		

> You just don't love me anymore, @gkontos!



Hey, every relationship has its ups and downs!


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## _martin (Jun 1, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> First of all this is a very high end storage solution, involving a lot of hardware! The hardware criteria were FreeBSD support. Also, it is very difficult to find modern hardware that is more supported in OpenIndiana or SmartOS.



I consider high end storage to be HP P9500 and arrays similar to this one, not the custom built storage.

So I guess storage is to be shared most likely via NFS then ?


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## gkontos (Jun 1, 2013)

matoatlantis said:
			
		

> I consider high end storage to be HP P9500 and arrays similar to this one, not the custom built storage.
> 
> So I guess storage is to be shared most likely via NFS then ?



It's been accessed only via Internet (VPN in most cases) via ssh. It is only purpose is to receive differential snapshots. In some cases the data are move manually via a USB "cartridge" service.


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## gkontos (Jun 2, 2013)

And YES for those who still wonder, I am not leaving FreeBSD.


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## hitest (Jun 3, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> And YES for those who still wonder, I am not leaving FreeBSD.



It is good to hear that, man.


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## jozze (Jun 4, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> And YES for those who still wonder, I am not leaving FreeBSD.



Well, I since this thread suddenly became the mockery of the topic "Farewell FreeBSD" :e I'll go one step further, and use it to hail FreeBSD with praise.

I am a physics student, I use my computer for numerical simulations that can put my system under a lot of pressure. On Linux, I hated that (on most distributions) the system was configured so that it took up so much of the precious RAM. Gentoo, IMO the most similar to FreeBSD philosophy, is making the most simple tasks complicated for no particular reason (because f*** you, that's why), from installation to keeping ports up to date. Sabayon is too easy and isn't a challenge. Slackware is fun, but then after a while lack of automation becomes an every day annoyance.

You can build FreeBSD from scratch to suit your needs, but it's not trying to overcomplicate unnecessary things. Also it's so clear and transparent what's going on in the system. For example /etc/ttys and /rc.conf have so far sufficed for most boot-time options. In Linux you are getting lost in the sea of configure files.

Another important fact is that FreeBSD has superb documentation -- the FreeBSD Handbook is plainly amazing. Not to mention the friendly and welcoming community on forums and mailing lists alike.

With FreeBSD you're free to hack it and fine tune it for yourself. Source code and everything is there with simple `# make fetch`. You can fine-tune your system as you want it and it will never let you down. With various Linux distributions it's not the same, each is quite different.

I love the fact that the base system and ports are separate. Some people hate it, but I must say I love it, because with this I can use ports as a playground, learn, discover ... So far these first months have truly been an addicting experience.

And now to return to my original topic -- numerical simulations. I managed to make a minimal system, which is blazingly fast and uses only ~60MB when idle with Xorg & co. To set it up was quite easy. For the first time in my life I truly feel in control of my computer and its resources and not the other way around.

There are some minuses to FreeBSD too, but I don't really care about them right now.


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## GreenMeanie (Jun 10, 2013)

Should of have used *O*racle *L*inux*.*




			
				gkontos said:
			
		

> I suppose that the title speaks for itself.
> 
> During the past last moth I have been involved in a major operation dealing with ~40 CentOS boxes that had to be moved to 12. Being a FreeBSD addict, junky,  gave me the opportunity to take the job and complete it. Yes, the strong foundations are there. Yes, if you manage many FreeBSD boxes you can deal with anything.
> 
> ...


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## sulman (Sep 4, 2013)

jozze said:
			
		

> Another important fact is that FreeBSD has superb documentation -- the FreeBSD Handbook is plainly amazing. Not to mention the friendly and welcoming community on forums and mailing lists alike.



It's good, but there are analogues. The freely available Redhat documentation is similarly excellent, and the Arch Linux wiki remains the documentation standard for a complex OS, in my opinion. It's simply superb. 

FreeBSD's great strength is it achieves what many Linux distributions set out to - KISS. I'm in two worlds; I support a small number of [size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD servers at work, have [size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD on this laptop (boy, was _that_ a lot of work) but I'm mainly a RHEL admin, and run Arch on most of my home computers. 

It's about strengths and weaknesses.

I would add that I am not entirely sure where Linux is going at the moment, and I like the methodical, calm approach of [size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD. I'd like to see better hardware support ([size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD on the desktop always gives me deja vu about Debian circa 2005) but [size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD has always been about process rather than outcome, for me. I don't mind the slightly plodding pace.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 4, 2013)

sulman said:
			
		

> The freely available Redhat documentation is similarly excellent, and the Arch Linux wiki remains the documentation standard for a complex OS, in my opinion.


And Redhat is different from Arch which is different from Ubuntu which is different from...


			
				sulman said:
			
		

> I would add that I am not entirely sure where Linux is going at the moment, and I like the methodical, calm approach of [size=-1][Free?][/size]BSD.


And THAT is why FreeBSD will continue to be superior in every way.


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