FreeBSD 6.0 a good idea?

ChipMonk · Unread post by **ChipMonk** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:41 pm

Well, after a year of wrestling with Fedora Core 2 (and seeing the pipeline of development) I decided to get my next server on Free BSD, and as 6.0 was available, and Plesk 8.0.0 released, i opted for it.

Is it a good idea?

Yum is not there
UP2Date is not there

And I am kinda lost, but I have personal feeling that FreeBSD is far better than FC4.

Advise me ASAP

philb · Unread post by **philb** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:45 am

ChipMonk wrote:Is it a good idea?

What is your goal? What are you trying to accomplish?

Efficient Web Serving?
Security?
Administration Simplicity?

Without knowing something about what you are trying to do with the server, it's impossible to advise you about it.

ChipMonk · Unread post by **ChipMonk** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:30 am

Well, If i take a closer look at what I need, I want all the following as posted by you.

Efficient Web Serving
Security
Administration Simplicity

ON Fedora, its easy to manage in many areas, but the probem is Load on server. It always take upto 98% of the RAM.

And more the sites are on it, the more slow it responds (this is my own observation, maybe misconifuration a cause for this).

Again as on my obersvation running BSD on a very heavy box (heavy in the sense of load on it), it increased the performance upto 30% on my one Cache server for ISP (I had linux on it before).

On BSD i m totally dumb, it took three hours for me to find an alternate to YUM.

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 6:11 am

If you're comfortable using yum and the 'Red Hat way of things' but think the Fedora lifecycle is just too short I'd recommend CentOS. The config files are in the same place, you can use yum, I doubt you'll notice any difference using the machine. At the same time you do get more stability and 5 years of security fixes as it's a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

FreeBSD is definitely a whole other world in terms of administration. The documentation is pretty good though, so if you're willing to invest some time into that, you might want to give it a shot.

By the way, I think a 30% performance increase probably isn't due to 'just the OS'. Is this on the same hardware? If so, I reckon the difference is probably due to different configuration. But I might just be wrong.

ChipMonk · Unread post by **ChipMonk** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:03 am

In open developments, life cycles are very short.

This is not a windows world, where 95 releases, and afte 2 and half years next version comes. Or there is no time frame when the Vista (if ever) will be released.

So that is exapactable thing, the only thing that i have seen so far is OVER using resources of Linux, and Fedora.

I am comparing the resources on two boxes (one is on FC2, and second is on FreeBSD 6.0) and the difference is HUGE.

Regarding the increase in performance, we installed FBSD on the same system the linux AS3.0 was on.

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:23 am

ChipMonk wrote:In open developments, life cycles are very short.

This is not a windows world, where 95 releases, and afte 2 and half years next version comes. Or there is no time frame when the Vista (if ever) will be released.

I don't agree. Fedora's lifecycle may be short, but for instance CentOS or Debian's aren't. There may be a new version more often that a new Windows version, but there are a lot of Linux distributions that are maintained for at least 5 years.

But if FreeBSD is giving you a high performance increase over Linux you might want to go with that. Just know that you'll have to learn a thing or two about FreeBSD coming from Linux. Then again, it shouldn't be to hard to get the feel of it. Get a test box and take it for a spin. If you're comfortable administering it you can try switching.

ChipMonk · Unread post by **ChipMonk** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:35 pm

I decided for FC4 atm.

I will keep on learning bsd, and after six months i might opt for a new server based on it (if i will think i should).

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:39 pm

Why FC4? If you decide to stick with Linux you'll be stuck with a short lifecycle OS again. I'd definitely go with CentOS 4 instead. Almost identical to Fedora Core, but much longer lifecycle.

ChipMonk · Unread post by **ChipMonk** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:01 pm

Reason is that i have good hands on FC, and FC4 will last at least till the mid of next year.

So I am taking the chance.

But i will test a box on FBSD. CentOS i will test locally.

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:22 pm

I'm phasing out Fedora Core on my servers and I'm only using CentOS on new ones. I can't say anything's different really. Not too strange as Fedora stuff ends up as RHEL and CentOS is just a rebuild of RHEL. Good luck with your new setups.

Unread post by **scott** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 8:20 am

Id say go with CentOS4 if you're looking for a stable business platform. The advantages there are the 5 year lifecycle, and a whole lot more scrutiny when it comes to Q&A and business type apps. A good question to answer is do you want to be running a server, or running a business.

FC's are good if you're me, running a desktop box (I use FC5), need the absolutely latest features, and have a high tolerence for change. It's outstanding for R&D.

Internally for development I'm using a combination of gentoo and FC5, and a lot of the things you see in my archive are being backported from those environments. So for example, the php 5.1 and mysql-5 rpms are backported from the FC5 design and PHP 5.0 and Mysql 4.1 were backports from FC4.

ChipMonk · Unread post by **ChipMonk** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 10:27 am

Well, I have ordered a system based on CentOS4 after considering your advises.

You are right, i m on to run a business, not a server

I will set a couple of test boxes in house for FC5 and BSD6.0 (though in ISP its the great thing to chose :: as per my experience).

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 11:50 am

Note that Plesk is not yet supported on FC5

http://www.swsoft.com/en/products/plesk8/reqs/

ChipMonk · Unread post by **ChipMonk** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 12:15 pm

I am not testing it for plesk.

only for local testing.

evilrabbi · Unread post by **evilrabbi** » Mon May 01, 2006 12:11 pm

ChipMonk wrote:Well, after a year of wrestling with Fedora Core 2 (and seeing the pipeline of development) I decided to get my next server on Free BSD, and as 6.0 was available, and Plesk 8.0.0 released, i opted for it.

Is it a good idea?

Yum is not there
UP2Date is not there

And I am kinda lost, but I have personal feeling that FreeBSD is far better than FC4.

Advise me ASAP

I love FreeBSD and it's easier to manager and 10x more stable then FCx.
It's just as simple to keep a FreeBSD box updated and secure as it is with a FC box. You want cvsup-without-gui installed and portupgrade installed.

Run /srand/sysinstall then when you get that up choose "media" and select an ftp mirror. Then goto "Packages" and select cvsup-without-gui and portsupgrade. Copy of the example files /usr/share/examples/cvsup (I think that's it I dont remeber off the top of my head, but the files that you need to copy are "ports-supfile" and "stable-supfile") to /root then cd to /root and type "cvsup -g -L 2 ports-supfile -h cvsup2.freebsd.org" this will update your ports tree then type "cvsup -g -L 2 stable-supfile -h cvsup2.freebsd.org" this will update your source tree.

now to update all the packages.

portupgrade -a this will update all the ports on the system.

if you want to install something such as pico goto /usr/ports and have a look around if you see something you wanna install goto the dir and type "make install"

ie.
cd /usr/ports/editors/pico
make install

this will install pico to the /usr/local/bin dir

good luck and have fun

P.S I just did this off the top of my head so if it contains a slight error dont hang me

Atomicorp

FreeBSD 6.0 a good idea?

FreeBSD 6.0 a good idea?

Re: FreeBSD 6.0 a good idea?

Re: FreeBSD 6.0 a good idea?