FreeBSD

On a freshly installed FreeBSD 10.1 system, we have to configure a few things first.

Network

For a dynamic network configuration (read: DHCP), we'd use something like this in /etc/rc.conf:

hostname="len"
ifconfig_bge0="DHCP"
ifconfig_bge0_ipv6="inet6 accept_rtadv"

If we need a static network configuration, use:

ifconfig_bge0="inet 10.0.0.3 netmask 255.255.255.0"
defaultrouter=10.0.0.1
hostname=len.example.net

Restart the network configuration:

/etc/rc.d/netif restart
/etc/rc.d/routing restart

Packages

Install missing packages:

pkg update
pkg install bash bash-completion curl gnupg1 lsof pv rsync screen sudo vnstat

• Change a user's shell via chsh
• Add vnstat_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf.

Update

Update package repository catalogues, then update the installed packages:

pkg update
pkg upgrade

To update the base system:

$ freebsd-update fetch 
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 5 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 9.3-RELEASE from update5.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Inspecting system... 
Preparing to download files... done.
[...]
The following files will be added as part of updating to 9.3-RELEASE-p16:
The following files will be updated as part of updating to 9.3-RELEASE-p16:

$ freebsd-update install
Installing updates....done.

Upgrade

To upgrade to another release, use:

$ uname -r
9.3-STABLE

$ freebsd-update -r 10.1-RELEASE upgrade
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 5 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 9.3-RELEASE from update2.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Inspecting system... done.
[...]
Fetching metadata signature for 10.1-RELEASE from update2.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 1 metadata patches. done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Fetching 1 metadata files... done.
Inspecting system...
Fetching files from 9.3-RELEASE for merging... done.
Preparing to download files...

To install the downloaded upgrades, run "/usr/sbin/freebsd-update install".

$ freebsd-update install
Installing updates...
Kernel updates have been installed.  Please reboot and run
"/usr/sbin/freebsd-update install" again to finish installing updates.

Note: since the kernel has already been updated, we may have to boot the old (9.3-RELEASE) kernel and continue with:

$ freebsd-update install
Installing updates...
Completing this upgrade requires removing old shared object files.
Please rebuild all installed 3rd party software (e.g., programs
installed from the ports tree) and then run "/usr/sbin/freebsd-update install"
again to finish installing updates.

Update userland tools:

pkg update
pkg upgrade

Continue with:

$ freebsd-update install
Installing updates... done.

Now the updated kernel should be bootable and the upgrade should now be completed.

If all is well, and no freebsd-update rollback is required, /var/db/freebsd-update/files can be emptied:

$ du -sh /var/db/freebsd-update/files; find /var/db/freebsd-update/files | wc -l
781M    /var/db/freebsd-update/files
  29428
$ find /var/db/freebsd-update/files/ -type f -exec rm -v '{}' +

Postinstall

Encrypted swap

→ Hardening/FreeBSD

Linux compatibility

Mount linuxprocfs and install linux-f10-procps:

$ grep ^lin /etc/fstab 
linprocfs       /compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw 0       0
linsys          /compat/linux/sys  linsysfs  rw 0       0
 
$ sudo mkdir -p /compat/linux/{proc,sys}
$ sudo mount /compat/linux/proc && sudo mount /compat/linux/sys

$ sudo pkg install linux-f10-procps

Set linux_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf.

Screensaver

On this laptop I wanted to have the LCD shut off when the (text) console was idle

$ cat /etc/rc.conf
[...]
apm_enable="YES"
blanktime="60"
saver="blank"

Enable APM in device.hints

$ grep apm.0.disabled /boot/device.hints 
hint.apm.0.disabled="0"

SMART

To enable S.M.A.R.T., use smartmontools:

pkg install smartmontools
echo 'smartd_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf
cp -i /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf.sample /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf

Start smartd and

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/smartd start

The installation package should have created /usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/smart to check on monitored devices periodically.

Memory

FreeBSD memory notation is quite different, let's explain it in short:

$ top -b -d 1 | grep -A1 ^Mem
Mem: 112M Active, 687M Inact, 158M Wired, 8268K Cache, 87M Buf, 12M Free
Swap: 1024M Total, 41M Used, 983M Free, 3% Inuse

• Active: Memory currently being used by a process
• Inactive: Memory that has been freed but is still cached since it may be used again.
• Wired: Memory in use by the Kernel. This memory cannot be swapped out
• Cache: Memory being used to cache data, can be freed immediately if required
• Buffers: Disk cache
• Free: Memory that is completely free and ready to use.

Build a Kernel

Checkout the kernel source to /usr/src via SVN:

svn checkout https://svn.freebsd.org/base/stable/10 /usr/src

ARCH=$(uname -m)
cd /usr/src/sys/$ARCH/conf/
cp GENERIC MYCONF

Edit MYCONF, if needed and we're ready to compile:

cd /usr/src/
make -j4  buildkernel   KERNCONF=MYCONF
sudo make installkernel KERNCONF=MYCONF

Reboot - and if all goes well, our new kernel should be running:

$ sysctl kern.conftxt | grep ident
ident   MYCONF

Note: compiling the kernel needs quite a bit of disk space, in our FreeBSD-10.2 installation:

1.1 GB  /usr/obj/usr/src/sys/MYCONF
1.5 GB  /usr/src/

Links

• Bugs
• FreeBSD Wiki / freebsdwiki.net
• A FreeBSD 10 Desktop How-to