Re: server upgrade


Gary Bohn wrote:
David Iain Greig <greig@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:slrne5kcf3.c2d.greig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Gary Bohn <garybohn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
David Iain Greig <greig@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:slrne5juqk.5f6.greig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Assuming Larry's back from hicksville, I will be upgrading darwin
from the current Pentium-II 300MHz server it runs on to an AMD64.
FreeBSD will be jumping from 4.x to 6.x.

I've prebuilt the root disk, and pre-configured inn and apache,
sooooo assuming things go schmootly it should be a mostly plug-and-
play switchover. The pain will be felt by Josh and me in fixing
what I've overlooked.

--D.


How well does FreeBSD deal with AMD 64?

Fine. The nve0 onboard ethernet is also fine, and I am told the
particular mobo I am using (Asus A8N-E) works peachy for the SATA
raid, I picked it for that precise reason (well, ASUS was a given,
I use ASUS mobos as a first choice anyhow).

I've had 'erasmus' up and running on my dining table *al fresco*
for a couple days - mobo+cpu+ram plugged into a PS, with SATA
disk and IDE DVD all laid out. It's been hiccup-less.

So today erasmus becomes darwin, and I migrate the home directories
and a few config files I didn't ftp down to erasmus.

I've tried a few Linux versions (I include FreeBSD in this, even
though it really isn't Linux) on a new Asus/Amd64 combo and have
found hardware support to be rather poor, especially when using SATA
and RAID.

I don't require the RAID, but the AMD64 support in 6.0-STABLE seems
quite fine. The AMD64 support is why I'm moving from 4.8-STABLE to
6.0-STABLE.

Here's hoping you have better luck than I have had. I'd send you a
case of Kokenee but it wouldn't get there in time for the melt-down.

If it doesn't work I back out.

--D.


May I ask why you use FreeBSD rather than Mandriva or Fedora? I'd like
to set up a web/ftp/blog server at home but have found that Mandriva and
Fedora have a steep learning curve for an old DOS/Windows hack like
myself. (I also have little time to spend learning the ins and outs of
Linux)

Look at it this way: if Linux evolved from FreeBSD, why is there still
BSD?

My guess: the same reason the server kept running until the fan got
annoyingly noisy. It worked, and it still does.

So why am I, personally, surrounded by Windows machines, many of them
"alfresco" as it was charmingly put, or at least unbuttoned...

.