# can't get dhclient to start automatically



## axfelix (Mar 6, 2013)

Hi folks,

Super newbie here -- I've been using Ubuntu on desktop on and off for quite some time, and I generally know my way around a *nix terminal, but I've recently installed FreeBSD 7.4 (8 couldn't mount the disk and 9 had a kernel panic when decompressing archives) on an old PII I had lying around, thinking I could jimmy it into a functional webserver.

I've been managing OK so far (apart from a lot of broken dependencies when running pkg_add and seemingly no easy to way to correct them, and the fact that my mouse and keyboard for some reason won't respond in Gnome), but I'm having an irritating issue: every time I reboot the machine I have to run sudo dhclient rl0 to get an IP address from my router on ethernet. Am I missing something? Once I actually get this thing working to a satisfactory degree, I was going to try finding an ndis-friendly 802.11n card and switching over to wireless so that my wife is a little less bothered by my having a server in the closet, but I need it to at least be able to grab an IP address so I can ssh in afterwards without having to walk over to the closet.

Even after I get an IP address, I don't seem to be able to get anything on port 80 (apache tells me that it can't reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name when it starts, if that helps), but that might just be an issue with open ports.

Thanks for any advice!


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## SirDice (Mar 6, 2013)

FreeBSD 7.4 kind of went end-of-life a week ago 

But I'm wondering what the error was with 8. I had a PII working fine with 8.x before I really had to ditch the noisy old bugger.

Mouse and keyboard not working in X is a known issue. You don't have hal and dbus running. With the IP address I think you're missing these in /etc/rc.conf:

```
ifconfig_rl0="DHCP"
dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"
```

Edit: Oh, apache.. You're probably missing something like this in /etc/rc.conf too:

```
hostname="mybox.example.com"
```


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## axfelix (Mar 6, 2013)

Thanks a lot for the quick, straightforward response! I hadn't realize 7.4 just went end of life ... oh well. The error with 8 was when trying to format the disk, I was able to find one other instance of via Googling -- apparently it was due to having a prior install of FreeBSD (which I did, when I was testing an older install which I thought might run better on a PII, before realizing I needed to switch to something that still had live repos) and the partition manager screwing up when trying to wipe it off. The other person with the error claimed to have solved it by just wiping it in a GParted LiveCD before installing, but I tried that and it didn't work.

One question: I'm not actually planning on switching my current DNS (which is an old work server I'm getting kicked off of) to this server on my home network until everything's sorted out. Should I set hostname to localhost for testing purposes in the meantime?

Thanks again.


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## SirDice (Mar 6, 2013)

axfelix said:
			
		

> One question: I'm not actually planning on switching my current DNS (which is an old work server I'm getting kicked off of) to this server on my home network until everything's sorted out. Should I set hostname to localhost for testing purposes in the meantime?


I wouldn't pick localhost as it has a specific meaning and purpose. Just pick something random. Doesn't really matter much you can always use /etc/hosts to fix the name locally.

With 7.4 running you could try freebsd-update(8) to get it to 8. 9.1 should also work but might be a little overkill for it. FreeBSD 8.x is supported for at least another year


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