Installing FreeBSD to a USB stick is not hard. Someone have already done that using the  simplest solution possible. But I want to install FreeBSD to a USB stick by using buildworld/installworld instead, so that I can make a simple NAS out of it.

This is how I did it:

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I’ve been playing with ZFS lately, and I’ve learned how to turn on compression if you forgot it when creating the filesystem. As you probably know turning on compression *after* you data has been written will not compress those files. It will only compress new data. This guide will tell you how to that. Warning: Your mounpoint will go offline.

Lets say you have created a ZFS filesystem for /usr/src - The data is already there, and compression is turned off.
Create a snapshot.
zfs snapshot tank/src@snap

Create a new temprary filesystem with compression.
zfs create -o compression=gzip tank/temp


Transfer data from tank/src@snap.
zfs send tank/src@snap | zfs receive tank/temp/src_comp

Ensure compression is on.
zfs get -r compression

Compression is inherited from the parent so have to turn on compression.
zfs set compression=gzip tank/temp/src_comp

Destroy old uncompressed filesystem.
zfs destroy -r tank/src

Rename the filesystem.
zfs rename tank/temp/src_comp tank/src

Destroy temporary filesystem, and the old snapshot.
zfs destroy tank/temp
zfs detroy tank/src@snap

List all zfs systems to ensure everything is okay.
zfs list

(Optionally)Set mountpoint for the new and compressed src.
zfs set mountpoint=/usr/src tank/src

Vóila!

Test scenario

Install Archlinux 2007.08

Install using Archlinux-i686-2007.08-2.core.iso, as default as it could be.
Run ‘pacman -Scc’
Run ‘df -h’ and write down result.
Run ‘pacman -Q | wc -l’ and write down result.

Upgraded to 2008.05.20

(Archlinux uses a rolling release, so this is the latest “release)
Run ‘pacman -Suy’, and follow instructions.
Reboot
Run ‘pacman -Suy’ again
Run ‘pacman -Scc’
Run ‘df -h’ and write down result.
Run ‘pacman -Q | wc -l’ and write down result.

Install Archlinux 2008.05.20

Install using arch-ftp-install-2008.04-rc-i686.iso to start a FTP installation
Run ‘df -h’ and write down result.
Run ‘pacman -Q | wc -l’ and write down result.

Results

Archlinux 2007.08-core
Disk usage: 475,5M
Number of install packages: 93

Archlinux upgraded to 2008.05.20
Disk usage: 549M
Number of install packages: 96

Archlinux 2008.05.20
Disk usage: 549M
Number of install packages: 96

Conclusion

Perfect!

Following up my previous posts, this one is about Fedora.
Fedora 9 came out last week, and it’s time to test.

Test scenario
Install Fedora 8

Install Fedora 8 with Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso , default installation.
Update system with ‘yum update’
Reboot
Run ‘yum update’ again
Run ‘yum clean all’
Run ‘df -h’ and write down result.
Run ‘rpm -qa | wc -l’ and write down result.

Upgrade to Fedora 9

Reboot, and boot with Fedora-9-i386-DVD.iso, and do a default upgrade to Fedora 9.
Update system with ‘yum update’
Reboot
Run ‘yum update’ again
Run ‘yum clean all’
Run ‘df -h’ and write down result.
Run ‘rpm -qa | wc -l’ and write down result.
Run ‘rpm -qa | grep fc8 > fc8-packages-in-fc9-upgrade’

Install Fedora 9

Install Fedora 9 with Fedora-9-i386-DVD.iso , default installation.
Update system with ‘yum update’
Reboot
Run ‘yum update’ again
Run ‘yum clean all’
Run ‘df -h’ and write down result.
Run ‘rpm -qa | wc -l’ and write down result.
Run ‘rpm -qa | grep fc8 > fc8-packages-in-fc9-fresh-install’

Results

Fedora 8 default install: 3.1G
Number of install rpm’s: 879

Fedora 9 upgraded from Fedora 8: 3.3G
Number of install rpm’s: 951
Number reported during upgrade: 879
fc8 packages:
fedorainfinity-gdm-theme-8.0.1-1.fc8.noarch
system-config-soundcard-2.0.6-11.fc8.noarch
xorg-x11-drv-nsc-2.8.1-4.fc8.i386
ql23xx-firmware-3.03.20-1.fc8.1.noarch
kacst-fonts-1.6.2-2.fc8.noarch
ql2100-firmware-1.19.38-1.fc8.1.noarch
sazanami-fonts-gothic-0.20040629-4.20061016.fc8.noarch
lklug-fonts-0.2.2-5.fc8.noarch
xorg-x11-drv-via-0.2.2-4.fc8.i386
xorg-x11-drv-cyrix-1.1.0-5.fc8.i386
redhat-lsb-3.1-19.fc8.i386
fedorainfinity-screensaver-theme-1.0.0-1.fc8.noarch
python-genshi-0.4.4-2.fc8.noarch
fedora-icon-theme-1.0.0-1.fc8.noarch
paktype-fonts-2.0-2.fc8.noarch
jomolhari-fonts-0.003-4.fc8.noarch
fedora-gnome-theme-8.0.0-1.fc8.noarch
python-setuptools-0.6c7-2.fc8.noarch
xorg-x11-fonts-truetype-7.2-3.fc8.noarch
fedora-screensaver-theme-1.0.0-1.fc8.noarch
gtk-sharp2-2.10.3-3.fc8.i386
ql2200-firmware-2.02.08-1.fc8.1.noarch
ghostscript-fonts-5.50-18.fc8.noarch
ql2400-firmware-4.00.27-1.fc8.1.noarch
cjkunifonts-uming-0.1.20060928-4.fc8.noarch

Fedora 9 default install: 3.1GB
Number of install rpm’s:  930
fc8 packages:
ql2400-firmware-4.00.27-1.fc8.1.noarch
ql2200-firmware-2.02.08-1.fc8.1.noarch
ql2100-firmware-1.19.38-1.fc8.1.noarch
paktype-fonts-2.0-2.fc8.noarch
lklug-fonts-0.2.2-5.fc8.noarch
ql23xx-firmware-3.03.20-1.fc8.1.noarch
kacst-fonts-1.6.2-2.fc8.noarch
abyssinica-fonts-1.0-2.fc8.noarch
ghostscript-fonts-5.50-18.fc8.noarch
python-genshi-0.4.4-2.fc8.noarch
fedora-icon-theme-1.0.0-1.fc8.noarch
fedora-gnome-theme-8.0.0-1.fc8.noarch
redhat-lsb-3.1-19.fc8.i386
jomolhari-fonts-0.003-4.fc8.noarch
python-setuptools-0.6c7-2.fc8.noarch
cjkunifonts-uming-0.1.20060928-4.fc8.noarch
fedora-screensaver-theme-1.0.0-1.fc8.noarch
fedorainfinity-screensaver-theme-1.0.0-1.fc8.noarch

Conclusion

Now this is not that bad, considering that the default install size is almost 1GB bigger than Ubuntu. I still wonder why there is fc8 packages in Fedora 9.
The upgrading procedure took ages! I didn’t note the exact time, but 1.5hour is not far from it.

If I began using Facebook this day I would do the following experiment:

1) Register at facebook, keep default settings.
2) Do not add any friends unless somebody adds you first, or applications unless somebody invites you to
3) Do not join groups, unless invited by someone else.

Count the number of friends, applications and groups after one year.

As mention the last post I was going to post some numbers about how much disk space which is in used before, and after upgrading Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 compared to a fresh install of Ubuntu.

Test scenario

Desktop Edition(upgrade)
Install with ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso (Default settings)
Run ‘apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get clean’ to get the latest updates
Check disk usage
Upgrade using ubuntu-8.04-alternate-i386.iso
Run ‘apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get clean’ to get the latest updates
Check disk usage

Desktop Edition(fresh install)
Default install using ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
Run ‘apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get clean’ to get the latest updates
Check disk usage

Server edition(upgrade)
Install with ubuntu-7.10-server-i386.iso (Default settings)
Run ‘apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get clean’ to get the latest updates
Check disk usage
Network upgrade to 8.04
Run ‘apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get clean’ to get the latest updates(just do be sure)
Check disk usage

Server edition(fresh install)
Default install using ubuntu-8.04-server-i386.iso

Run ‘apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get clean’ to get the latest updates
Check disk usage

Disk usage

Desktop Edition
7.10 with updates: 2.1G
8.04 after upgrade: 2.4G
8.04 fresh: 2.1G
Cruft: 0.3G

Server Edition
7.10 with updates: 498M
8.04 after upgrade: 595M
8.04 fresh: 497M
Cruft 98M

Conclusion

There seems to be a good deal of cruft left behind after the upgrade even if you follow the normal upgrading procedures. Please note that this from a default install; No packages was added. I guess that almost anyone who uses Ubuntu install more than just the default, and that would probably make the difference even bigger. And what if you did not do a clean install of 07.04 either, you began with 06.06-LTS and upgraded whenever a new release was out.

Later I will do the same test with CentOS, openSUSE, Archlinux OpenBSD, and FreeBSD. I’m looking forward to see who wins this test :)

Back in March I had a talk about package systems on free operating systems. I did not cover all of them, but I guess I at least touched the mostly used ones. This and the next blog posts will be a follow up to that meeting, and today I’ll begin my telling you a bit about upgrading.

As I almost always do when I test a new operating system (except Microsoft) I install the previous stable version just to see how well their upgrading procedure is. Some are good, and some are of course bad. And by bad I mean really bad like Microsoft where the system is almost useless.

Upgrading procedures have grown to be pretty good during the last 3 years when it comes to Linux. BSDs(at least OpenBSD and FreeBSD) haven’t changed their upgrading procedures as far as I know, except some minior details. The whole reason for that is that the BSD’s have seperate base systems. The upgrading procedure for 3rd party applications *have* indeed changed. I remember when I began using FreeBSD and when portupgrade was not available. There was a whole lot of bad hacks to get things up to date, and pkg_version(?) was used to create a sh-script in order to upgrade outdated packages. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think pkgsrc still use some kind of ancestor of that these days.
OpenBSD added the -u option in pkg_add around 3.9 I guess, which made upgrading 3rd party applications way more easy than it was.

Back in those days the only real linux alternative, when it comes to upgrading packages easily, Debian was the only choice. Unfortunately Debian was so hard to install it almost wanted to know in which ISA slot you had your network card, and sound card. But this, as many other things have changed to the better. Not only have Debian had a pretty remarkable change in their installation procedure, but Ubuntu also showed up somewhere in 2004. Ubuntu is supposed to be used by the deadliest of us, and therefore they changed the installation procedure even more. A normal Ubuntu installation is clean, intuitive and nice looking. But I think the installation takes too much time, but thats a problem with almost every distribution. The only exception I know of is Archlinux, which probably have the fastest installation(and upgrading) in the linux world.

What I really miss in Archlinux is the lean and clean way of distributing netboot images as Debian and Ubuntu do. The same can be said about FreeBSD. While both OpenBSD and NetBSD distribute pxe loaders, it seems like getting a pxe installation of FreeBSD is only a myth that SomeBody(tm) got working. Unlike almost anything else in FreeBSD pxe is some of the things that is poorly documented.
Some of the things that I also miss from the BSDs (and some linux distributions) is the lack of USB installation images, at the same time as they distribute floppy disc images. Every BSD and Linux should distribute 1) ISO image 2) USB Image 3) PXE image 4) Floppy image. All of this images should also have a upgrade option.

In the next few days I will post some funny, yet disturbing, info on how much disk space is used before and after a upgrade of a couple of free operating systems using their documentation for how to do a upgrade. And at the same time show you how much disk space is used after a fresh install.

Welcome to my world. This is my first post using tenat.net and wordpress. Hopefully I will be able to follow up this blog a bit more effective than I did with my previous blog at blogspot.