Bluetrait

Well as some of you may know I’ve decided to jump out of my typical “OMG WINDOWS RULES EVERYTHING” stance. FreeBSD has been a great learning experience. Mainly because it is so damn easy to use and so damn hard to break!

Although this it the first time I’ve had a computer dedicated to another OS. When ever I used linux it was a dual boot which is bad. I think when I tried to do a kernel recompile on linux it crapped out because of space or something (booting from a floppy disc? Something like that). Anyway.

Recompiling the kernel on FreeBSD is easy and if you DO screw up (which I didn’t! *shock*) it backs up the old one and lets to go back to that from the boot loader. Sexy. And I’ve turned this box off without shutting down and I didn’t loss my partition!! Maybe I was just unlucky with linux or using the wrong distribution but whatever.....

I’ve successfully got Freebsd running as a web server now. I’ve done everything via the command line as it is a good way to learn.

I think I’ve recompiled Apache about 5 times and php about 3. This is because you need to choose your modules etc at the start (this is since I’m compiling stuff, not a package or a port). Now with windows it is a simple matter of uncommenting a line, way easy. But there are pluses with FreeBSD too! I’ve learn what modules I need and use.

Currently apache is
./configure --enable-mods-shared=most –-enable-proxy

And php is
./configure --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs --with-mysql –with-zlib

Funky. What I have noticed is that the FreeBSD box (dual Pentium3 650MHz with 640mb Ram) is much faster than windows was.

It seems to handle better, even then my Pentium4.

I like to use my “stress test” as an example. Hold down F5 on this blog site and watch the CPU load. Running on my P4 we’re seeing about 40-50% where as the FreeBSD box is 20%!!! Sure the load times aren’t *quite* as quick but it seems to jump back quicker. And it isn’t just because it is a dual system. When the box ran windows 2003 is was sitting at a much higher load.

Another thing is that BSD is a true multi-user operating system (like any other *nix os). You can just feel the power behind it. Permissions for an example. I had some trouble with them, but they’re very useful.

Plus the whole as many users on one box as you like without slow downs. Recompiling the kernel and apache, running apache, plus 2 users. Fine!

Another thing! Upgrading apache or php is easy. Either you can use ./configure-nice or just ./compile. The down time is about 5 seconds. Let’s compare:

Windows. Must shutdown apache then install the new version. Let say 5min
Nix. Compile apache while your other version is running. Once complete just restart the service!

I’m not going to move everyone over to FreeBSD anytime soon because I’m still much more skilled in windows and downtime is bad. But I do plan on moving this blog site over as my first test (*bragging rights!!*). Pity it will still proxy through my windows box.

Anyway FreeBSD is my new funky little toy. It isn’t hard to use at all, plus you don’t have your website stored in /var/www or something strange like linux :p So weird. It’s like running apache from the windows system32 folder :S Anyway whatever :)

Get this linux users, my root ( / ) is 68mb. Funky.

BTW: this message is my first post from a unix system.