At 09.02 10/6/99 +0000, Dinesh Nair wrote:
> Why I run FreeBSD
>
> SunOS, Solaris, Linux? No, thanks!
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Abstract
>
> Rich explains why FreeBSD is the superior OS for him. (1,500
> words)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Last month's column ("Serious FTP") discussed anindustrial-strength FTP
>site, based on a 200-MHz P6 ("Pentium Pro") and a pile of special-purpose
>I/O hardware. Although my main server isn't trying to serve thousands of
>simultaneous FTP sessions, I still want it to be robust, easy to maintain,
>and convenient to enhance.
>
>So, like Walnut Creek CDROM, I use FreeBSD. Specifically, I'm using FreeBSD
>2.2.8; I'll switch over to FreeBSD 3.x in a while; for now, I'm just lurking
>on comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.*, watching the new development track's bug reports
>quiet down.
>
>It's not that I haven't tried Sun's offerings; I have. In fact, I have both
>SunOS and Solaris running here, as well as a Power Mac (supporting the
>www.mklinux.org Web site).
>
>However unwillingly, I have been initiated into the administrivia of a
>variety of Unixish systems. And, for a variety of reasons, I believe that
>FreeBSD is a clear winner over the others I have installed.
>
>Why SunOS and Solaris lose I tried hard to retain the SunOS machine as my
>server. SunOS is a tidy (by current standards, at least) little BSDish
>operating system. Also, I am very familiar with its BSDish quirks, and it
>has been amazingly reliable, so I was strongly motivated to keep it going.
>
>Unfortunately, SunOS has had no real support from Sun for several years. As
>a result, the system software is quite out of date. It has gaping security
>holes (e.g., ancient sendmail), annoying limitations (a "mere" 2 GB per
>filesystem), archaic development tools (no C++ or Perl), and some real
>oddities (no DNS without (yurggh!) NIS).
>
>Patches and add-on packages could solve much of this, but there is no
>guarantee that they'll all play nicely together. In any case, I'm not into
>that degree of pain, so the SunOS box has been relegated to "experimental"
>use.
>
>I have managed to avoid Solaris for several years, but I recently had reason
>to set up a Solaris system. I attached a CD-ROM drive and a pair of disk
>drives to the SCSI bus of a spare ELC and fired it up.
>
>Everything went fine until Solaris looked at the disks. Then, because the
>disks didn't have Sun labels (well, duh!), the GUI installation procedure
>printed a nastygram and dropped me in front of a command-line prompt.
>
>If this was a SunOS system, I would have known exactly what to do at that
>point: find a utility to get the exact size of the disks, fake up a
>plausible disk geometry to match the size(s), and edit the mess into the
>/etc/format.dat file.
>
>You see, SunOS inherited the 4.2 BSD filesystem, which tries to employ disk
>geometry as a way to reduce head movement and rotational latency. Modern
>SCSI disks don't have fixed track sizes, however, so some parameter faking
>is required.
>
>This, however, is Solaris 7, Sun's latest and greatest operating system.
>There must be a magic command to set things up on an "alien" disk drive. The
>fact that the GUI didn't call the appropriate routine is a bit annoying, but
>surely just an oversight.
>
>So, I asked a friendly Sun support person for the answer. "Well, you have to
>find or create an entry in the /etc/format.dat file, matching the
>geometry..." Uh-huh. After years of development and millions of dollars,
>Solaris still can't figure out how to label a disk drive. Give me, as they
>say, a break.
>
>I won't even get into the issues of Solaris support tools, save to say that
>a Unixish system without a C/C++ compiler and Perl 5 isn't up to any
>standards I'd wish to set.
>
>
>Why Linux loses (for me)
>
>Part of my problem with Linux is subjective; As a long-term BSD
>administrator, I am simply more comfortable with BSD-style control files,
>etc. In short, it's a matter of taste and/or familiarity.
>
>There are other issues, however, that run deeper. BSD has had an immense
>amount of work put into it by large numbers of very knowledgeable people
>(e.g., Bostic, Joy, Karels, McKusick). It has, in fact, been tuned and
>polished until the entire system works remarkably well.
>
>All too often, when I ask about a Linux driver or facility, I'm told that it
>exists, but that it doesn't really work. This isn't to say that Linux is a
>bad system; it isn't. I just like the solid feeling I get from FreeBSD.
>
>Having said all this, I should point out that the open source community
>isn't a static environment. The Linux developer community is large and
>active; I'm quite certain that the "important" bugs will be fixed over time.
>
>FreeBSD amenities
>
>Aside from fundamental engineering issues and solving problems like labeling
>off-brand disks (FreeBSD's GUI installer handles unlabeled disks, of
>whatever size, without complaint), FreeBSD has a number of pleasing
>amenities.
>
>First, there's the basic command set. Perl 5 and GNU C/C++ are provided, of
>course, but there are other pleasant surprises. The other day, I wanted to
>know whether pic(1) was provided. Silly question; of course it was! And,
>because it was GNU pic, it had support for both troff and TeX. Nice.
>
>If a command isn't provided by default, I can usually find it in the FreeBSD
>Ports Collection (www.freebsd.org/ports). This delightful piece of software
>engineering provides automated downloading (FTP or CD-ROM) and installation
>for about 2,500 open source packages.
>
>The system handles several kinds of dependencies, source and/or binary
>distribution and installation, distributed CVS, oddball configuration
>questions ("Does your system support RFC 9876's second-level EWOMBAT
>handling in frobnitz(2)?"), and most of the other pain involved in
>installing (and removing!) packages.
>
>Some industrious (and suitably capable) party should look into porting the
>Ports Collection infrastructure to Solaris. Part of the necessary work has
>already been done: the NetBSD folks have already added one variant set of
>definitions. I understand that OpenBSD is riding along, as well.
>
>Any suitably competent make and Solaris wizard should be able to get things
>working fairly quickly. Although some packages would require tweaking, many
>should simply work "out of the box."
>
>Control scripts are another area where FreeBSD shines. As an "occasional"
>(read, marginally competent) administrator, I am particularly fond of
>FreeBSD's /etc/rc.conf file, which contains 150-plus annotated definitions
>of the form:
>
> defaultrouter="10.0.0.1" # Set to default gateway (or NO).
>
>Because this file is used by all of the other rc files, I have a single
>place to find (and set) key system parameters. The rc files are still
>available (and editable), but I seldom need to look at them directly.
>
>I could go on, but I think you get the idea. FreeBSD is an up-to-date
>incarnation of the 4.4 BSD-Lite system. Years of careful software
>engineering have given it robustness, clean organization, and all the
>features its team of experienced hackers can provide.
>
>Solaris, in contrast, seems to be hobbled by a range of nontechnical
>concerns. Putting GNU C/C++ on Solaris might require support; worse, it
>could (and does, in any case) keep customers from buying Sun's commercial
>C/C++ development solutions. Similarly, allowing the system software to
>recognize and label random disks wouldn't help Sun to sell its own drives.
>
>In short, Sun appears to have a conflict of interest between short-term
>revenue and helping its customers. FreeBSD, with no such conflict, is free
>to pick the best technical solutions, and does. Finally, as an open source
>project, FreeBSD benefits from the efforts of thousands of volunteer
>developers.
>
>Having said all this, I should point out that Solaris serves some needs that
>FreeBSD does not. Full-on SMP and realtime support, for example, are still
>in their infancy on the FreeBSD side.
>
>So, I'm not saying you should dump your Solaris systems (let alone your Sun
>stock!) in favor of FreeBSD and Walnut Creek CDROM. I do recommend, however,
>that you check into the way the FreeBSD (and Linux, if you prefer)
>communities are doing things.
>
>The Solaris community (and Sun, for that matter) could stand to pick up a
>few pointers.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>About the author
>
>Rich Morin operates Prime Time Freeware (www.ptf.com), a publisher of books
>about open source software. He lives in San Bruno, CA, on the San Francisco
>peninsula.
>
>URL: http://www.sunworld.com/swol-05-1999/swol-05-silicon.html
>Last modified: Friday, May 07, 1999
>
>
>By the grace of God, /dinesh@alphaque.com\_/\ "All dogs go to
>heaven."
>dinesh@alphaque.com (0 0)
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