Freebsd: Uncharted Waters

[inverse_bloom 0]

Ive been spending a little time trying to get freeBSD working on VMWare workstation 6 with limited success. Ive been following this guide which has been very helpful until i started installing XORG and flux box.

A link to it is here -

http://www.math.colostate.edu/ED/notfound.html

The first problem i seem to be encountering is when i go into xorgconfig and set the graphics card driver as "VMWare guest OS (generic)" and try "startx" after the saved config, it fails to successfully load the "vmware" module explaining that it doesn't exist. 

It appeared that after installing an xorg freeBSD port, it didn't install everything such as the vmware driver. (i have tried the process twice)

So i tried out the steps in this -

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

In the setup for this it requested what monitor resolution i wanted but after saving, i had no success here either (it didn't appear to have much effect at all).

So instead I set xorgconfig with a generic VGA driver. This did get me some success, i enter into fluxbox but it loads at a 640x480 resolution and then appears to respond to nothing else; but the keys to kill the x window. 



In the first tutorial i mentioned above, it instructed me to modify ./xinitrc to start flux box upon entering "startx" (to avoid entering a graphic console first, i'm guessing?)

I re modified ./xinitrc not to do that, but i get the following error message: config/hal couldn't initialize context: null null. My idea behind this is if i could enter a visual console i may have some success playing around with vmware-toolbox.

Here is a screen shot where i did have a console up, but my path quickly drifted from that point so i dont know how to get it working again.



So i'm a bit stumped where to go from here without confusing the matter. My aim is to get into a GUI of some sorts and flux box is much easier than installing gnome apparently. What i guess has happened here, is i have a non-recent version of freeBSD (6.3 not 7.2), when it goes to fetch xorg and flux box from the net it's installing a non-compatible version. If that wasn't the case then i'm confused because i have followed these tutorials to the letter.

I haven't got the mouse working with xorgconfig as the intellipoint drivers for my USB Microshaft mouse dont recognize it. Despite that id even be happy to just get the trackpoint working and that could be ok, since i found a link explaining how to manually edit xorgconfig to allow this - 

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Can anyone help me get some GUI action happening? The main difference between freeBSD and linux in this instance is freeBSD's usage of "linux ports" which are available from their site. 

Has anyone successfully installed freeBSD 6.3 on a virtual machine be it VMware, MS Virtual PC 07 or Virtual Box? 

Edited December 1, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[inverse_bloom 0]

Well after a little play i managed to get the Xorg VMware video chip set driver working. As it turns out, the Xorg port installation doesn't install all modules. In this case it doesn't install the VMware graphics module nor the VMware mouse module. So when you go into xorgconfig and set the video card driver as option "30", vmware its pointing to nothing. So this requires quickly getting to the appropriate directory - cd /usr/ports/x11-drivers/xf86-video-vmware and then typing "make install clean".Likewise you do something similar for the mouse driver - cd /usr/ports/x11-drivers/xf86-video-vmmouse and then typing "make install clean".Then you go through the setup again "xorgconfigure" and set the VMware graphics card with option "30" but there is no option to set the mouse protocol type to VMWare mouse (its not in the menu).So i tried guides on the net to manually point to it through xorg.conf, no success there. Also my keyboard isn't working (102 key). From what ive gathered VMWare only has limited support for freeBSD which probably results in much wasted time by individuals trying this avenue out.I'm going to try "virtual box" next to see how that goes.

Edited December 2, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[inverse_bloom 0]

Just tried freeBSD on VirtualBox with great success! I installed KDE and its associated dependencies from the port library. I ensured that the Network adapter for the virtual machine was set to "PCnet-PCI II (nat)". I then configured the network and then set Xorg with a general Vga driver.?Everything loaded up with out a hitch after "startkde" and the performance is not bad for a virtual machine. FreeBSD is highly stable, finally i can have a go at it, thank you very much VirtualBox.?

[k_nitin_r 8]

Hi InverseBloom!I've noticed that the newer versions of Linux distributions include better support for hardware devices, and if you do perform a dual boot installation on physical hardware rather than within a virtual machine, you can get started with a new operating system much quicker. It's one of the reasons why you ought to keep your old PCs upgraded with the maximum RAM that they can support and have them lying around even when you don't need them. I preach that to people and try to follow it too - I've got a Compaq Presario 2132 notebook PC (powered by an Intel Pentium-4 processor) and although I didn't max out the memory, it runs Ubuntu 9.10 with 512MB RAM. I'm a bit concerned about the environmental burden since the cooling fan turns on whenever I do anything more than simple computation on it but it's better than having a desktop PC running all day. I also have an IBM Thinkpad notebook PC (powered by an Intel Core processor) which I would be retiring pretty soon and I did max out the RAM on it. It runs Microsoft Windows XP and I believe it has the computational ability to run Microsoft Windows 7 too. Although it is branded as an IBM Thinkpad, it's a Lenovo Thinkpad - Lenovo has the right to use the IBM brand name for about five years and perhaps also gets the Thinkpad and ThinkCenter units designed by IBM. It's my secondary PC and I keep it for the times when I need to have a stable work environment rather than a software development environment. My primary work PC is an HP Compaq 6710b (powered by an Intel Core 2 processor). I install software on it if I want to try something out, I re-install the operating system several times, and do my software development on it. I did consider the possibility of running Ubuntu Linux as my primary operating system and running Windows XP over Sun VirtualBox (I'm a fan of VirtualBox too - that's primarily because it's an open-source project!) but for processor intensive operations the Windows XP machine experiences a bottle neck because VirtualBox can only allocate a single core to the virtual machine. In either case, the HP Compaq 6710b comes with pretty modest capabilities and a reasonably spacious hard drive. It may not be the best machine out there, but I take consolation from the fact that it didn't come out of my pocket and when I do get a new job, it gets replaced without having to spend a penny! :-)Anyway, so when I did want to try using Ubuntu Linux, I installed Ubuntu Linux 9.04 on the Compaq Presario 2132EA and the installation went quite smoothly right up to the end. I later installed Ubuntu Linux 9.10 and that went just fine. All the drivers came right out-of-the-box (okay, so I just installed Ubuntu Linux from a CD I burned with a downloaded ISO, but it is just an expression... the drivers worked right off the CD) and I did not have any additional settings to make. I believe the one thing that could have been a problem was the BIOS setting to set the USB and parallel port modes (yes, the Presario 2132EA has a parallel port! It must have been the last generation that got to keep them), which I set before I even started the Linux installation due to my previous experience with incompatibilities that I experienced while running Linux on the hardware.Anyway, now that you do have a VirtualBox install, I believe you would have the ability to access the virtual machine using a remote desktop (on Windows) or the terminal services client (on Linux) to access it without having to configure it in the guest operating system. It's one of the benefits of running the operating system within VirtualBox if you can get all of the virtual hardware detected and running. I believe you could do the same with a physical PC as well but then you would have to buy a IP KVM switch, which does not come cheap but can support up to 4 machines for a basic unit.

[inverse_bloom 0]

Yeah i do have an IBM Thinkpad! Its an old R50 single core 1.7 GHZ. Is your laptop an R, T or A series? I upgraded mine from a 1.4 Ghz Banias to the 1.7 Banias. I considered putting in a compatible Dothan but they run much hotter.Actually you'd be surprised, i manage to run virtual machines with MS Virtual PC, VMWare and now Virtual Box on a single CPU with about the same performance as my mums HP dual core 1.8 Ghz (vista as mums host). MS Virtual PC is a poor performer in my opinion and Virtual Box and VMWare seem to be on par with each other.I tried installing freeBSD on my laptop just as a straight install with limited success some time ago. The problem at that time was i had to supply the hard drive header information displayed in the BIOS to freeBSD fdisk or whatever, suffice to say that was a huge issue and prevented me from progressing further with the installation process. (it could have been a BIOS issue).Apparently freeBSD (although Unix based) has a different kernel than standard Linux platforms and has far superior virtual memory management and server performance. Besides the Linux ports to the BSD platform i think the two platforms do have quite some differences (although they seem similar at first look and are both Unix based).Regarding all my old PC hardware most of it quite literally fried and has been thrown away. Most of it has been due to my over clocking ventures but also because the amount of use i get out of them. Regarding your Windows 7 on your IBM Thinkpad, Im fairly sure i tried windows 7 out on my R50 when it had the Banias 1.4 Ghz chip in with 1 gig of ram. I had some very good luck with it you'd be surprised! Although it probably also depends on the graphics card in it, in mine i have a 32 Meg Radeon 7500. Which is one of the highest level graphics card in that old series of Thinkpads.If you have the 16 Meg variation it could work Ok, but i can't give any promises. On mine i got the same sort of performance as XP (maybe a little bit less) and on the Beta version a crash that screwed up the GUI terribly. (But that was the first beta).The only problem with it as you may know, is Windows 7's very liberal use of the ram. Although this is what is attributed to its good performance you will need nothing less than 1 gig (maybe two 1 gig sticks would do the job nicely). Also replacing ram in Thinkpad's is too easy, really gotta love them machines.

Edited December 6, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[k_nitin_r 8]

Hi!@inverse_bloomWhen you mention that replacing the RAM in the Thinkpads is easy, are you referring to the Thinkpads built before Lenovo took over? On the IBM-Lenovo Thinkpad T60, replacing the memory involves taking out a couple of screws, pulling out the palm rest, and disconnecting the touch pad before finally being able to get to the memory sticks. I didn't really want to do it the first time due to the risk of damaging something but the second time, it was a breeze (call it experience!). I do, however, have a problem with tightening one of the screws on the Thinkpad T60 that left the keyboard a little wobbly after the memory upgrade though. That, and trying to get the palm rest to snap into place takes me a lot of patience. This could be one of those things that seems evil but is good for the computer service businesses :-)I do have to mention that on some laptops, the screws are probably made of some kind of really cheap material - using a screw driver grinds into the screw head making them impossible to remove. I'm glad the Thinkpads have a decent set of screws to hold the entire notebook together.

[inverse_bloom 0]

Actually my R50 is the equivalent of a T42 i believe, which is 1 generation behind yours. With the R50 there were two locations for the ram, if i remember correctly the first one required you to remove the keyboard component only by unscrewing it at the bottom. The ram in mine must have been placed in a different location as it is positioned directly beneath the middle of the numeric keys.The mini PCI slot (which now contains a Atheros wireless card) is directly under the touch pad, which sounds like where your ram is . I also have an optional DIMM slot underneath the laptop towards the back. It is a quick process unscrewing a hinged panel, rotating it 180 degrees popping out the slot and popping the stick in then putting back together.The only gripes with mine is it only accepts PC 2700. PC 3300 was a very decent speed increase and could very well be what is in yours (or maybe PC4200). For that reason, i only purchased some cheapo second hand Samsung sticks to take care of the job otherwise it would have been Kingston.I don't have any issues with wobbly keyboards after putting mine back together ,but then they do seem like different designs. One thing you might want to be careful of though is if you decide to replace your laptop screen be careful during that process! I was very fortunate not to "totally" wreck the antennae which extends along the left edge parallel to the screen. (I only nipped some of the plastic on the wire, which had minimal affect on wireless reception).

Edited December 7, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)