On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 09:21:29 -0700, Andy Ruhl <acruhl@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 23:02:24 -0800 (PST), Jeremy C. Reed
> <reed@reedmedia.net> wrote:
> > On Mon, 10 Jan 2005, Andy Ruhl wrote:
> >
> > > Would it be too offensive to produce a "Migrating from <fill in the
> > > blank> to NetBSD" type of document? I still run a FreeBSD server, and
> >
> > Sounds like a great idea. I worked on a document for BSD/OS to NetBSD (and
> > part one is online) and it would be good to do some others.
> >
> > Probably a short article of about a thousand words should be sufficient.
> > It could cover some of the differences in fundamental skills/tasks:
> 
> Uh oh, looks like I stepped in it... I'm coming from the sysadmin and
> desktop user perspective, I'm not a developer. I'll see what I can
> come up with. But some random notes:
> 
> > - differences in device and naming
> 
> The most obvious thing that comes to mind is disks. Maybe also ttys?
> How far do we want to go here?
> 
> > - differences in installation steps
> >
> > - user and group administration; adduser/pw versus user(8)
> >
> > - maybe sysinstall (for later administration) versus sushi
> 
> I haven't used sushi much because it seemed like it wasn't very
> functional yet. I'll look back into this. Is it worth talking about it
> if sysinstall is much more polished? Maybe we should only talk about
> the command line?
> 
> > - standard/default running services
> >
> > - starting and stopping services (FreeBSD 4.x style to rc.d)
> >
> > - basic networking (and network configuration at start up)
> >
> > - daily / periodic jobs
> >
> > - differences between logging and log rotation
> >
> > - update source, build and install kernel and world steps
> >
> > - ports versus pkgsrc; binary packages; updating packages
> >
> > - miscellaneous differences in tools; no sockstat, etc.
> >
> > - 10 sentences introducing 10 interesting tools included with NetBSD
> >
> > - where to find documentation and help
> >
> 
> A few other points that may be worth adding:
> 
> - Moving the passwd information from FreeBSD to NetBSD
> 
> - Restoring data from FreeBSD to NetBSD
>   - subpoint, can we just use dump and restore? I think we're on the
> same filesystems now? Can't use tar because I use file flags...
> 
> - Differences in disk layouts
> 
> - Differences in emulation for running other binaries
> 
> - Differences in rc.conf
> 
> - Differences in upgrade from source (but maybe this is just a pointer
> to the doc for using build.sh)
> 
> > Anyone want to send me a couple sentences, a paragraph or more off-list?
> > I'll edit and compile for a useful article. (Let's start with FreeBSD
> > 4.x to NetBSD 2.0.)

I haven't given up on this. 

But I am noticing that, for me, this is turning into a major undertaking.

I never realized how much I didn't know about FreeBSD because I had
been using /stand/sysinstall.

Among other things, I also need to start learning ipf vs. ipfw. I'm
not super versed in TCP/IP (which means I probably shouldn't be
running my own firewall anyway), so this may be slightly difficult.

I'm also finding that I generally don't like the disk layout in
FreeBSD, even though it's more intuitive to the PC person. And it uses
bsdlabel instead of disklabel. I never knew... I've been using
/stand/sysinstall too much!

I'm afraid that I might not be able to contribute too much in the
immediate future, but if there is some smaller subject that makes
sense I'll start writing about it.

One thing is certain, NetBSD has taught me more about hardware and how
an operating system works than FreeBSD. This is either a good thing or
a bad thing depending on how you look at it.

Andy