Saturday, July 31, 2010

Scroll Back in FreeBSD Console

The FreeBSD console works quite differently from Linux: under Linux, you press Shift+Pg-Up or Pg-Dn to access the console buffer.

Under FreeBSD, it is different. Press 'Scroll-Lock' or 'Pause/Break', and the system will enter scroll mode and the blinking prompt will disappear. At this time you can use arrow keys or Pg-Up Down to maneuver the scroll buffer.

The only thing lacking for my FreeBSD system is the sound output.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

FreeBSD, Fully Loaded

Now my FreeBSD system is fully up: ZFS is running, Samba configured, Openoffice installed.

Hence FreeBSD is my latest toy, and I believe I am gonna say good bye to OpenSolaris from now on.

FreeBSD is not for the faint of heart, especially those who don't know or don't want to use command line. I installed FreeBSD from the CD version, and when it was first loaded, there was basically nothing in the box - no X, not even bash.

However the BSD ports system is a charm to use, as long as you have broadband, it is much more user-friendly than OpenSolaris, and can even beat Ubuntu hands down.

Here are some basic stuff:

Suppose you want to install firefox, you have two choices: install the pre-compiled one, or compile and install from source.

1. Precompile Binary

There are multiple sources for precompiled binary packages, the easiest way is to issue:

pkg_add -r firefox

That is it. If the system can find firefox, it will be automagically installed.

If the package is not available at the default location, just google around and you should be able to get most of the popular packages pre-compiled.

2. Compile from Source
In the '/usr/ports' directory, software packages are divided into their functional group, e.g. editor, audio, news, etc. Inside those folders will be folders for individual software packages.

Taking the firefox example, we can get it from '/usr/ports/www/firefox', change directory there, and issue:

make install clean

The above command in effect will download, compile, and install the package (effect of 'install'), while the 'clean' command will remove all the intermediate files.

Do note I highly suggest you always try to install pre-compiled binary, and only if you cannot find the pre-compiled binary, or the binary doesn't suit your need, then you roll your own stuff. Compilation is a _long_ process. I did that for OpenOffice, the machine ran for 4 hours non-stop, to the point I gave up and downloaded the compiled version (just google around).

Monday, July 26, 2010

FreeBSD I am

Here I am, after slotting in the new 160GB hard drive and downloaded FreeBSD 8.1.

This time it boots well, so well that I am now typing on firefox on KDE on Xorg on FreeBSD8.1

Although I am still configuring my Samba share, but to my delight, my data in ZFS can be ported to FreeBSD without much issues.

Once everything is well and smooth. I will install FreeBSD to my 500GB OpenSolaris drive, and wave OS good bye.

So be it, after 3 years. At least I still have my ZFS. :)

Sunday, July 25, 2010

FreeBSD 8.1 Released

I am gonna give FreeBSD another try because OpenSolaris is so dead now. I have a spare hard drive, so it won't hurt much for me to experiment a bit.

Release notes for FreeBSD 8.1 is here.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Banks and Competition

Recently US government has launched some initiatives to limit financial institutions from doing high-risk investments and also fined some of those who are responsible for the financial crisis.

In response to the fines and regulations, some banks said they would increase the fees for most of the items which were free before the legislation. In other words, the banks pass the expenses to consumers.

Is there anyway to counter what the banks are doing?

I think yes, the US government can set up a bank that doesn't charge consumers all those fees imposed by commercial banks. In order to compete, the banks will have to reduce or abolish all the fees altogether.

I think this will work :)

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

My Next 400 Posts

I have stopped blogging for a while. My last post was written on June 20, and coincidentally, it is my 400th blog post so far. Four hundred is not a small number to me, and I feel amazed I can write that many stuff.

Actually I do have some technical stuff that I wish to blog about. For example recently I am tinkering with PCSC (PC/Smart Card) daemon, and I managed to solve the issue whereby it runs properly on my iMac and not on the macbook. 

I guess I will need to organize my thoughts before I can resume my normal rate of writing. But heck, I think this will happen soon. :)