moncyb's Journal: Ext2 and FreeBSD

I'm migrating from Linux to FreeBSD. One of the major things which is keeping it from going smoothly is the need to be able to access files between each one's partitions. I thought about using my old DOS partition (1 Gig), but fat doesn't keep track of permissions (maybe I should just bite the bullet). But also it would be nice to just use the Linux partitions from FreeBSD.

I could use FreeBSD's kernel drivers for ext2, but the docs say it may be unstable and outdated, so I am afraid to use them. Do they work? I'm using FreeBSD 4.8. If not, are there alternatives? Searching freebsd.org only turns up articles from 1996. There is a Linux+FreeBSD Howto, but it doesn't say anything about the stablilty of FreeBSD's ext2 driver. I've looked at Freshmeat and whatnot, but the few tools I've found are simplistic. The best one seems to work like an ftp program. Not very convenient. Is there a userland daemon where I can mount an ext2 partion in FreeBSD (that way if the thing crashes, my entire system won't be screwed)?

Oh well, my FreeBSD install is somewhat messed up anyway--accidently got all this GNOME crap installed because it was a dependency for some other package...will have to hunt down that package and kill it. Sendmail has to die as well. If the ext2 driver trashes my hard drive, I'll just reinstall, I guess. So, should I live on the wild side?

FreeBSD

[Pharmboy]

I thought about making the change to free FreeBSD as well, mainly for security, but also to elliminate the dependancy hell that Linux is suffering from and because Apache always benchmarks much better under FreeBSD. My problem was getting lost at the install. I use windows and linux, and have to admit, i am spoiled with idiot proof installs on both. I don't mind having to know all my hardware, to a degree, with the two times i started to install freebsd, i chickened out at the install, getting lost. gue

Re:FreeBSD

[moncyb]

Well, when comparing how easy the installs are depends on which Linux distro you use. Slackware is slightly more difficult, as (IIRC) it doesn't have visual tools to partition the hard drive, select which kernel modules/drivers, or choose the daemons you want to run. FreeBSD does.

However, one problem I had was FreeBSD's tool didn't disable sendmail, but just added a line to /etc/rc.conf, and the preexisting one clobbered it. May be because those tools were previosly Perl. They decided to remove Perl from

Re:FreeBSD

[Pharmboy]

I was assuming that BSD used a startup similar to Linux, where you use init levels (/etc/inittab) and /etc/init.d and /etc/rc.d/rc*.d for the different init levels, so you could just change the S to K, as in linux. Now, as I stated, I don't KNOW this, I just assumed that since this method was a pretty much Sys V style, that BSD had it setup in a similar fashion. To be honest, I am not sure what to expect, but I did expect a similar unix appearance, but with a very different kernel arch. Guess not.

the f

Re:FreeBSD

[moncyb]

I was assuming that BSD used a startup similar to Linux

I had assumed FreeBSD used inittab too, but I checked and it's not there. Looking at the man page for init [freebsd.org], it appears the thing is hard coded to run the /etc/rc script, then start getty logins from /etc/ttys. The various scripts are just /etc/rc.*, instead of in the directory /etc/rc.d.

To be honest, I am not sure what to expect, but I did expect a similar unix appearance, but with a very different kernel arch. Guess not.

Well there are quite a fe