Geek Style » FreeBSD

FreeBSD dotfiles

Babak Farrokhi — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:28:34 +0000

Unix system administrators develop their own customizations and configuration file templates over time. These customizations could be either personal customizations or system-wide customizations. Personal customizations live under each users home directory and the files name usually starts with a dot (which is why these files are usually called dot-files). And the system-wide customizations can be usually found under /etc hierarchy.

I also developed my own set of configuration templates that I use on almost every system I log into. They are usually kept on my private subversion server so I can update them from time to time and keep track of the changes as well.

So I am uploading a selection of my configuration files on my website so everyone can grab a copy and make his own modifications and use them. I use these files on FreeBSD and Mac OS X, but most of the parts can be used on Linux, Solaris, etc as well. I would also be glad to have your suggestions and feedback.

http://farrokhi.net/dotfiles/

From Linux to FreeBSD – Part 1

Babak Farrokhi — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 18:34:38 +0000

I heard this so many times from different people that CLI in FreeBSD is much less user-friendly than CLI in Linux. But is it true?

Unlike Linux that uses Bash shell, the default shell in FreeBSD is csh or tcsh. Linux users are used to tab completion, which is not the default behavior of C Shell. If you need to have tab completion, all you need to do is to add one line to your C shell configuration file (~/.cshrc) :

set autolist

And you will have your good old tab completion in C Shell.

make.conf in FreeBSD

Babak Farrokhi — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:20:53 +0000

I am type of person who likes to build everything from source code in FreeBSD to get better performance and other customizations. It has become a habit to play with ports tree and system source code and now I believe I have my own template for various server platforms.

One of the most important parts of each configuration template is the /etc/make.conf file. This is were you can change general behavior of the build system. This file is where you actually say which compiler optimizations should be used or what options has to be considered as defaults. Good news is that ports collection as well as the operating system itself honor these configuration.

Here is how a typical make.conf on one of my boxes look like:
CPUTYPE?=nocona


CFLAGS=         -O2 -pipe -fno-strict-aliasing

COPTFLAGS=      -O2 -pipe -funroll-loops -ffast-math -fno-strict-aliasing
KERNCONF=       SERVER GENERIC

OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS= YES WITHOUT_X11= YES BUILD_OPTIMIZED= YES WITH_CPUFLAGS= YES WITHOUT_DEBUG= YES WITH_OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS= YES NO_PROFILE= YES BUILD_STATIC= YES

The CPUTYPE variable tells gcc to optimize generated binary code for specified processor. In this case I am using 64bit Xeon processor architecture and “nocona” is the correct CPUTYPE to use. You may want to use “pentium4” on a typical Intel P4 CPU. A list of possible CPUTYPE values can be found in the sample make.conf file located at /usr/share/examples/etc/make.conf.

The CFLAGS variable indicates what parameters should be passed to gcc compiler when compiling typical programs such as ports or when building the whole operating system (i.e. buildworld process). I have been using this for a few years now and I haven’t experienced any issues in generated binaries.

The COPTFLAGS variables only applies to kernel builds. So if you need special compiler optimization for kernel, this is the variable you should consider using.

The KERNCONF tells system to compile one or more kernels based on the existing configuration files. In this example I have two kernels, first is GENERIC which is the default kernel file and exists in all systems by default and the other is the customized kernel configuration file called SERVER that I use on my typical servers. Both kernels will be built when running “make kernel“. The first will be installed and used as the default kernel.

Everything else here is some defaults to be used mostly for ports. They can be found by looking into ports Makefile or the default make.conf file at /usr/share/examples/etc/make.conf.

Syncing clock in FreeBSD

Babak Farrokhi — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:51:27 +0000

Keeping accurate time on a host (either a server or a workstation) is important because:

1- You need to know accurately when you should go for lunch or back home
2- You need accurate time in your event log files for further analysis
3- Many programs need to have the correct date and time to function (e.g. MTA)
4- You need correct timestamps on your files

Given above facts, you will need to enable NTP on your hosts and keep your system clock in sync with public time servers.

First you should make sure that your timezone setting is correct. The latest timezone information can be updated by installing “zoneinfo” port from /usr/ports/misc/zoneinfo:

# cd /usr/ports/misc/zoneinfo/ # make install clean

and run tzsetup(8) to make sure you have selected the correct timezone.

Now, to enable automatic time sync during system startup, you need to add a few lines to your /etc/rc.conf file:
ntpdate_enable="YES" ntpdate_flags="-b pool.ntp.org"

This will make your system to sync the clock upon startup. I use NTP pool at “pool.ntp.org” that suggests a NTP server from a large pool of available time servers. However you may use your favorite/local NTP server.

You can also synchronize your time manually by invoking ntpdate(8) from command line, passing an NTP server address to it:
# ntpdate time.nist.gov

New website for my book

Babak Farrokhi — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:10:46 +0000

So after a while, I finally managed to launch a website for my book, “Network Administration with FreeBSD 7“. The new website is actually a blog and I would cross-post the topics related to the book on both websites.

I would really appreciate your feedbacks on the current book and suggestions for future editions.

Network Administration with FreeBSD 7

Babak Farrokhi — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:41:48 +0000

Network Administration with FreeBSD 7 is the book that I have been working on for past year. And now it is published by Packt and is available for purchase from various bookstores.

This book is something that I have been looking for since I started with FreeBSD back in 1997. I needed a practical book with working examples of how to optimize my FreeBSD installations for various types of applications. And I never found that book, until I recently decided to write one.

“Network Administration with FreeBSD 7” is unique in several ways:

I tried to cover the exciting new features and improvements introduced in FreeBSD 7
It is full of tips and tricks on how to optimize your installation from optimizing disk I/O, network, virtual memory, etc.
It covers IPv4 and IPv6 configuration as well and bridging and routing in FreeBSD
It has working examples of different IPSec, GRE, PPP and GIF scenarios
I tried to cover Jail virtualization in working real world examples
Keeping your system up to date and customizing system for specific applications is thoroughly covered

I tried to stop telling stories in the book and give more real world examples instead, so reading this book would not make you smile

An article named Tunneling with FreeBSD (taken from book) is also available on PACKT website.

Update: The book has its own website at http://freebsdbook.com

What’s New in FreeBSD 7.0

Babak Farrokhi — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:03:14 +0000

I came across this interesting article about upcoming FreeBSD 7 that outlines some of the most important changes in this release.

The upcoming release of FreeBSD 7 is a major milestone for all FreeBSD developers and users. It is the most amazing release I have ever had the chance to play with. There are plenty of new features and many improvements, especially in networking (which is my area of interest).
I have had this chance to play with MySQL 5.1 running on FreeBSD 7 on top of 8 cores of Xeon processor in 64-bit mode. My impression was that it was almost as fast as kris’s benchmarks and totally kicked linux 2.6 in threading and SMP performance.

This is something I expected to see in FreeBSD 6. However FreeBSD seems to be catching up with linux again.

Depenguinator, A great tool for the Linux enthusiasts

Babak Farrokhi — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 05:24:14 +0000

Colin Percival (The original author of freebsd-update and binary diff), spent a few hours to resurrect the dead Depenguinator from ashes.
Using Depenguinator 2.0, you can remotely upgrade a happily living Linux system to the latest version of FreeBSD. To me its extremely useful when upgrading a Linux box to FreeBSD in a hosting facility that does not offer any FreeBSD servers.

The project needs help from community to test and report issues back to the developer in order to improve the software. However it is worth giving a try on your Ubuntu box.

On a related note, I was thinking of porting this into the package repository of various Linux distributions.

Interesting new features in Leopard

Babak Farrokhi — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:29:40 +0000

Now that Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is due to be released in 26 October, everyone is curious to see what is new in this version and upgrade as soon as its released.
Among the many new features, there has been a few of them that seemed interesting to me:

Create Instruments with DTrace

Monitor system activity from high-level application behavior down to the operating system kernel, all thanks to the power of DTrace and the instrument builder.

Sounds familiar? Yes, its the same DTrace you know from Solaris (also in FreeBSD). It would be very interesting for system developers to get the best out of OS X core system. Of course, there is an eye-candy interface for using DTrace called Xray.

Self-Tuning TCP

Let Leopard adjust TCP buffer size automatically. Get optimum application performance, especially in high-bandwidth/high-latency environments.

Using a BSD kernel, OS X already enjoys a fine-grained TCP/IP protocol stack, which supports latest enhancements and extensions. This self-tuning feature will definitely improve the network throughput in many situations. However I hope this can be disabled since some expert users prefer to configure the low level TCP/IP parameters based on their experience.

Application-Based Firewall

Gain more control over the built-in firewall. Specify the behavior of specific applications to either allow or block incoming connections.

This one was really missing in previous releases and many people were relying on Little Snitch to achieve this feature. Of course I believe brilliant people in Apple were smart enough to make it so it does not annoy users like windows firewall does.

Sandboxing

Enjoy a higher level of protection. Sandboxing prevents hackers from hijacking applications to run their own code by making sure applications only do what they’re intended to do. It restricts an application’s file access, network access, and ability to launch other applications. Many Leopard applications — such as Bonjour, Quick Look, and the Spotlight indexer — are sandboxed so hackers can’t exploit them.

Something that I am sure has equivalent in Windows, almost like running an application in a chrooted environment. However it sounds more complicated. This will hopefully improve the security in application level and reduce application level exploits (buffer overflow,…) risks.

Multicore Optimized

Take full advantage of modern architectures with multiple processor cores with improved scheduling, memory management, and processor affinity algorithms.

OS X was obviously not optimized for multi-core systems (despite the fact that apple has been shipping multi-core systems for more than a year). This enhancement will definitely improve the core system performance by getting the most out of processor power.

Conclusion

After using OS X for more than a year now, its my favorite Desktop environment. I like the eye-candy user interface while enjoying enterprise grade FreeBSD system core. I cannot wait to upgrade to the latest release, but I am certain that it is worth to wait a few days more.

FreeBSD 8

Babak Farrokhi — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:29:31 +0000

Finally RELENG_7 is born and the HEAD is now 8.0-CURRENT. I just finished upgrading two of my development boxes to the latest HEAD:

# uname -a
FreeBSD shaun.farrokhi.net 8.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 8.0-CURRENT #10:
Sun Oct 14 11:33:16 IRST 2007     root@shaun.farrokhi.net:
/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SERVER  i386

Viva FreeBSD!