Microsoft Windows is *not* an Operating System

After recently contracting for an investment firm who insists on using Microsoft Windows for an 'operating system', and after having my/their developer box re-imaged several times because of the Win32.Polipos virus rampantly running across their network, it occurred to me that Micro$oft Windoze is NOT an operating system... it's a binary petri dish whose sole purpose is to create a multi-billion dollar business for the likes of Symantec and McAffe.

As for me... I'm thankful my personal computers and laptops are running FreeBSD. Long live the BSD Foundation!

Free Network Attached Storage - FreeNAS

I recently installed FreeNAS 0.69RC2 (Kralizec) on an HP Pavillion 7915. The install was the easiest server product I ever installed and worked flawlessly right out of the box. Here is what I did to add extra network attached storage for zero dollars.

Server specifications for the HP Pavillion 7915 are:

• 1.1GHz Celeron processor
• Intel 810 chipset
• 128 Mb SDRAM
• 40 GB HD

I burned the 0.69RC2 (Kralizec) ISO onto a CD and started the Pavillion. The boot and install is very similar to a FreeBSD install (no surprise since FreeNAS is built on FreeBSD) so for those familiar with the FreeBSD installer this is a simple task. Follow the prompts to install the minimal OS and network services. Rebooting yields a server that boots in less than 16Mb of RAM. Detailed installation instructions are here.

Why FreeNAS?

Well, as the name implies it is free. Since the HP was donated to me by a coworker the server was free also (a real bonus). Secondly the ability to repurpose old hardware and create a new use for it is always a plus. Lastly the reasons to install FreeNAS include its ease of use and rock solid reliability and many more listed below.

What ships with FreeNAS?

FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key. The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.

Will FreeNAS work with Windows based clients?

Absolutely! FreeNAS ships with Samba server so Windows clients have no problem connecting, storing and retrieving data. See the snapshot below.

Other Solutions:

To be fair, there are other NAS solutions, for a price, but why pay when that old family computer is begging for a second life. There are other open source based NAS solutions (NASLite, Openfiler, and a host of others), but for the ease of install, web-based interface and works out of the box simplicity of FreeNAS, you owe it to yourself to download and install the very stable and full functioning NAS from FreeNAS.org (FreeNAS blog).

PC-BSD on a USB memory stick

My goal was simple: create a bootable USB memory stick and copy the install image of PC-BSD onto the USB memory stick.

This was achieved w/o much trouble using my FreeBSD server at work. I performed the following operations logged in as root.

The USB image was downloaded from the PC-BSD website


Assumption: the USB memory stick is plugged into the server at /dev/da0

# fdisk -BI /dev/da0
# bsdlabel -w -B /dev/da0s1
# newfs /dev/da0
# dd if=/usr/home/kengell/PCBSD7-x86-USB.img of=/dev/da0 bs=1m

Gmail 2.0 performance issues

The new Gmail 2.0 interface kills the performance of my Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop running FreeBSD 6.2 with the Fluxbox-0.1.14 x11 window manager and the Firefox 1.5 web browser.

Using /usr/bin/top shows the difference. Once Gmail 2.0 loads up and the initial load spike settles down 'top' shows CPU activity between 10-30%. Switching back to Gmail's Older Version drops the CPU down under 2%. Also, I configured /usr/local/bin/pine to use the Gmail IMAP interface (gmail -> Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP), in the meantime, so I can read my email w/o Firefox.

I hadn't noticed the performance issue at work where I run FreeBSD on a dual AMD64 platform. However on my ~10 year old Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop Gmail 2.0 sucks the life out of the PII CPU.

$ uname -a
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p9 FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p9 #0 Thu Nov 29 04:07:33 UTC 2007 root@i386-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/src/sys/GENERIC i386

$ dmesg | egrep "CPU|MB"
CPU: Pentium II/Pentium II Xeon/Celeron (397.05-MHz 686-class CPU)
real memory = 134152192

Also, it appears the new Gmail interface is buggy. In fact, while typing this entry the browser (Firefox 1.5) crashed and left a nice core file for me in my /home directory. Apparently, according to PC World, I'm not alone in my complaints.

Painless FreeBSD upgrade (6.1 to 6.2)

I've dreaded upgrading my personal web server from FreeBSD 6.1 to 6.2 because I'm new to FreeBSD and totally screwed up my unbuntu dev box the other day upgrading from 6.10 to 7.04. However I must give Colin Percival a giant THANKS for making this FreeBSD upgrade a very painless exercise. Trust me folks, if I can do this anyone can! Yet another reason to dump your Linux distro and run FreeBSD.

Check out Colin's notes on upgrading FreeBSD from one version to another.

FreeBSD: APM not working on Dell Inspiron 3500

I've been running FreeBSD (recently upgraded to 6.2) on my Dell Inspiron 3500 w/ the Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0 for some time now, but could never get APM (Advanced Power Management) to work. When I had a spare hour or two I'd research this topic to no avail. Today the pieces came together.

Problem: I wanted to see my battery level but couldn't.

Each time I would try to run apm to see my battery status I would get:

APM; /dev/apm: No such file or directory

Resolution:

Modified /boot/loader.conf to include the lines:


apm_load="YES"
hw.acpi.verbose=1
hint.acpi.0.disabled=0


and rebooted the laptop.

Now when I type apm I see:


APM version: 1.2
APM Management: Enabled
AC Line status: off-line
Battery Status: high
Remaining battery life: 99%
Remaining battery time: unknown
Number of batteries: 2
Battery 0:
Battery Status: high
Remaining battery life: 100%
Remaining battery time: unknown
Battery 1:
Battery Status: high
Remaining battery life: 98%
Remaining battery time: unknown

The Blackbox Window Manager

Of all the X11R6 window managers to run (fvwm, gnome, kde) why Blackbox?

It's a matter of size, and yes size matters. However, this time it's a matter of small is beautiful. Normally I like the KDE window manager (for not so obvious reasons), but mostly run gnome on my Ubuntu developer box. However, for my rather old and outdated Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop, the one I'm using to write this blog, It's limited in resources (see previous post). I like this old extremely outdated Inspiron. It may not be the lightest but it's a workhorse and I have had it for close to a decade. That fact alone speaks volumes about the quality of Dell products and the loyalty component in my social DNA (or that I'm just too frugal for my own good).

Back to what started me writing this post...

Blackbox was the smallest, most full featured window manager I could run on FreeBSD. Okay, fvwm will give it a run for the money but I've never liked the fat frames in fvwm. But today, I finally got around to cleaning up the Blackbox menu and removed all the items that don't apply to FreeBSD running in this limited environment (my Dell not Blackbox).

Here's what I did to remove from the Start Menu things like StarOffice or Mozilla Navigator that are not installed on the massive 4Gb hard drive:

1. copy the default Blackbox menu file to my local directory (e.g. /cpusr/share/blackbox/menu .)
2. change the write protection (chmod 666 ./menu)
3. edit the file (e.g. vi ./menu) and remove entries like
1. [exec] (StarOffice) {soffice}
2. [exec] (Acroread) {acroread}
4. save the file
5. edit the .blackboxrc file and point it to the local menu file
1. session.menuFile: ./menu
6. save the file
   
7. right click on the desktop and tell Blackbox to Reconfigure

That's it. Now I have a custom start menu for Blackbox.

FreeBSD on Dell Inspiron 3500

When Micro$oft decided to end support for Win98 my old laptop, a Dell Inpirion 3500, seemed destined for the recycle center. It was still in good shape and all the peripherals worked (CD, dual batteries, floppy, etc). So I didn't just want to toss it out. Upgrading to Win2K was not an option because of the limited resources (400Mhz processor and 4Gb hard drive).

Instead I installed FreeBSD 6.1 (later upgraded to 6.2) and added the BlackBox window manager (pkg_add -r blackbox). I'm sitting here editing this blog from my laptop. Admittedly FreeBSD is not a 'normal' choice for an ex-WinDoze system, but having worked with FreeBSD at Fermilab it was not completely unfamiliar either. I can run the command line interface (useful for home network admin tasks) with as little as 20Mb of memory (the laptop only has 64Mb). The 4Gb hard drive is still 75% free after the install.

Running X windows w/ the BlackBox (/usr/ports/x11-wm/blackbox) window manager and Firefox 1.5 requires only 60Mb! Factor in the zero cost for FreeBSD and Firefox and this old laptop will still be in the house for the foreseeable future.

For a 'simple' networked device that gets used on weekends and evenings to browse the web (in an ultra secure OS) I can't complain! Heck I'm so happy with this system I had to tell others.