Re: rcs

On 10/09/2013 12:33, Allan Jude wrote:
> On 2013-10-09 12:23, Freddie Cash wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 9:12 AM, Freddie Cash <fjwcash_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 6:41 AM, Julian Elischer <julian_at_freebsd.org>wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 10/9/13 2:35 AM, Freddie Cash wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Alfred Perlstein <bright_at_mu.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>  You're right on the money, to be honest this is one of the reasons why
>>>>>> I've switched to using OSX as my desktop OS.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> zsh, vim, screen by default.  and upgrades work.  At the end of the day
>>>>>> I'm spending time doing work, not mucking about my workspace to make it
>>>>>> usable for development.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think this was brought up at BSDCan in the discussion about making
>>>>>> FreeBSD a more featured development platform.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Speaking of... has anyone tried PCBSD?
>>>>>>
>>>>> PC-BSD isn't much different from FreeBSD.  The installer is GUI and
>>>>> support
>>>>> ZFS, there are some GUI setup tools on first boot for X, there are some
>>>>> GUI
>>>>> tools to select binary drivers for X, and there ​​are working pkgng repos
>>>>> available.
>>>>>
>>>>> I had a lot of issues with PC-BSD 9.0 and 9.1 as I was trying to do
>>>>> things
>>>>> "the FreeBSD way" which broke a lot of things that were done "the PC-BSD
>>>>> way" (aka don't manually edit config files used for booting).
>>>>>
>>>>> ​Switching to the "rolling-release" (aka PC-BSD 9-STABLE) and moving all
>>>>> my
>>>>> config file edits into <filename>.conf.local fixed my issues.  Things
>>>>> have
>>>>> been running smooth, and I finally understand the beauty and simplicity
>>>>> of
>>>>> freebsd-update + pkg.  OS gets updated once per month, packages get
>>>>> updated
>>>>> twice per month, no more compiling things from source.  It's like using
>>>>> Ubuntu/Debian but with the power and features of FreeBSD.  :)
>>>>> ​
>>>>>
>>>> When they went to a ZFS-only system, using GRUB, with no alternative,
>>>> then I'm afraid they lost me.
>>>> I want a root filesystem on UFS for reliabailty and simpleness.  I can
>>>> debug it's media if needed.
>>>> Before then I really liked it (though ther eis not enough information on
>>>> how it works interneally if you want to use it.
>>>> hopefully that will come.. and I LIKE PBIs  FreeBSD should adopt PBIs for
>>>> sure.
>>>> With PBIs you could make even quite base items separately installable.
>>>> versioning problems go away.
>>>>
>>> There's no GRUB in a default install of PC-BSD 9.0, 9.1, or 9.2.  Even on
>>> a ZFS-only setup (which is what I run).  It's using the FreeBSD loader,
>>> with custom artwork and menus.
>>>
>> ​Hrm, it seems they've changed things with the 9.2 installer.  It does use
>> GRUB2 (ewwww!) for the boot loader, and integrates support for ZFS boot
>> environments (via beadm) into it.  :(  Shame they didn't use the BE support
>> in the FreeBSD loader for this.  Wonder if my 9-STABLE-based PC-BSD install
>> will get "upgraded" to GRUB?
>>
> The reason they went to grub2, is that the way the freebsd loader menus
> work, it loads the kernel before it draws the menu. This means if there
> is a problem with your kernel (probably the most valuable time to have
> boot environments) then the menu never comes up, and you cannot select
> which BE to boot from. Grub doesn't rely on a FreeBSD kernel until after
> you select which BE to boot from.
>
> Kris and I discussed it at length with Devin Teske, and while he has
> demonstrated being able to populate a lower menu with the ZFS datasets,
> I am not sure if the other issue can be resolved.
>

Yea, GRUB is not my first choice, but ATM this is the "cleanest" way we
can do ZFS BE's. However if you don't like ZFS / GRUB, you can always
use regular FreeBSD and just grab our toolchain from
sysutils/pcbsd-utils* in ports or use our PKGNG repo:

http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/Turn_FreeBSD_into_PC-BSD%C2%AE

I'm planning on using GRUB to do UEFI booting for 10.0 as well. But when
the FreeBSD loader matures to the point of having support for all these
features, I'll gladly move us back.

-- 
Kris Moore
PC-BSD Software
iXsystems