FreeBSD the next step update 1

Although I was away for a week, I managed to get a few things accomplished over the weekend.  I’ll go ahead and relist my list of things to do now and then add some comments about them below…

1. install VirtualBox (done but not running/needs configuration)
2. install VMWare Workstation (I have a license for either 6.0 or 6.5 on ebay for linux x64 a while back for $5, I was the only one who bid.  I have the iso somewhere on one of my drives)
3. mount all my ntfs drives and setup nfs support (all done before I started writing this except for 2 folders I want mounted in specific places)
4. test my remote and local network ssh login (should be setup already, except forwarding the port on the router)
5. get Google Chrome working
6. test audio and video playback (can I watch hulu?)
7. get my VM’s to launch and successfully run programs (should be easy after installing the correct apps and configuring them, worried about the ATI drivers)
8. install Firefox (my backup browser for when web pages don’t work in chrome)
9. test remote access to FreeBSD for my mounted ntfs drives (I have a friend in Korea that is willing to help)
10. begin converting  my ntfs drives to a better FS
11. convert my drives from MBR to GPT to utilize GUID’s
12. find a port/package manager GUI interface for KDE
13. eliminate all traces of Gnome from my computer (several packages I have installed have dependencies that have Gnome in the name, need to find out if they are necessary and nuke em if not!!)
14. build my first kernel
15. get wine installed and working (in case I have something that will refuses to run in a VM)
16. either install some older DOS games (<—two different links there) or find something newer out there install and get them working (VM or wine, just for fun and to say “oh yeah I love that game, I still it installed on my system…”)
17. get Xorg port forwarding to work with cygwin.
18. setup a respectable backup system (currently my backup drive turned into emergency storage when I had a few HDD’s all fail within weeks of each other last year, now I have new drives and enough storage space, I even copied the data off the external backup, but have not yet done a backup of FreeBSD.  Might make this item number one!!)
19. get java working (part of getting hulu to run)
20. get flash working (part of getting hulu to run)

I guess I’ll start at the top.

1. 75% in progress, troubleshooting and more testing needed.  I have gotten my user added the the “VirtualBox” user group, but I get this error when I try to execute VirtualBox from the command line ”VirtualBox: supR3HardenedExecDir: couldn’t read “”, errno=2 cchLink=-1“  I tried loading VirtualBox from KDE and it was loading for about 12 seconds then nothing happend, also it did not install a manual page.  I’ll have to do some forum surfing to figure this one out.  this exact error is referrenced in the FreeBSD handbook noting that it should only occur if you are using an older version on VirtualBox.

2. 0% not started.  no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.

3. 100% complete.  everything is automounting at bootup and it is doing it where I want it to.

4. 100% complete.  I am working almost exclusively via ssh now and can connect to it remotely as tested via an Android cell phone ssh client (props to connectbot)

5. 10% in progress, researched only.  Chrome can be installed as a Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, or Fedora package, I just need to set my system up to handle RPMs and I might be able to get it to install, hopefully the newest version will work easier than last august when everyone was trying to hack the install to make it work, especially since every forum I went to never had a successful complete port available and there were no posts from 2010.

6. duplicate issue.  going to delete this one, as #19 and #20 pretty much sum it up.

7. 30% in progress, trouble shooting and additional testing required.  as noteded else where VirtualBox is installed but not able to run, and I have not started on VMWare.

8. 90% complete.  Firefox 3.0.14 is installed and running.  this appears to be the newest version available for FreeBSD according to the ports tree, as FreeBSD does not get listed on the Mozilla Download Page.  Ha HA the jokes on me, when 3.6 came out they moved it to /usr/ports/www/firefox and left 3.0 in the /usr/ports/firefox3 folder, so I apparently have installed the older version… now I have to uninstall it and install the newer one…

9. 90% in progress, trouble shooting and more testing needed.  self testing shows that a user is able to ssh in and access the drives, but is not able to ftp in and access the drives.  I used “sudo ln -s /mnt/<directory> /home/<user>/<directory>” I haven’t used links much and need to see if the -s (symbolic) is what is preventing the user from accessing the data via ftp.

10. 0% not started.  no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.

11. 20% in progress, 1 out of 5 drives is currently running with GPT.  the new 1.5TB drive was setup with GPT when installed into the system.  the new 500GB drive (FreeBSD boot drive) is still MBR as the FreeBSD fdisk application did not have an option for setting the drive boot record to GPT, although I have found documentation on converting the FreeBSD boot drive to GPT.

12. 0% in progress, initial research turned up nothing useful.

13. -30% not started, situation worsening, additional packages labeled as “gnome-xxxx” or “xxxxx-gnome” have been added as dependencies during other package installations. 

14. 10% in progress, initial research has turned up useful information; however I am not currently in a possition to proceed.

15. 0% not started.  no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.

16. 0% not started.  no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete, will require at least one of #’s 1, 2, 7, or 15 to be complete before work can begin.

17. 0% not started.  no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete, not a priority and very near the bottom of the list of things to do.

18. 20% in progress.  I know it is not recommended for backups, but I have rsync installed and am looking into using it.  I will continue to look for alternatives; however I like the this setup.  I would like to have the system fully setup before I start making backups, but I will probably get this completed in the next 48-72 hours, even if just running it with rsync.

19. 60% in progress, I thought I had it installed, but when I went to the test if you have java installed page of www.java.com it failed to test my java installation (might need to add the plugin for firefox, will check); however the java download page only lists “Windows, Mac OS, and Linux” as OS choices, so I will have to do more research.

20. 40% in progress, I thought I had it installed, but when I went to hulu it told me I need java 10.0.22, also amd.com told me I need the flash plugin installed; however again there is no FreeBSD listing on the download page as a supported OS, so I will have to do more research.

21. 100% complete.  (I know I added this one) get Yakuake working in KDE, well I did a “sudo pkg_add -r yakuake” and it started downloading, it has about 6 dependencies and those had about 150 dependencies, most of which I already had installed.  the problem I saw was it force downloaded KDE 3.5 and all of it’s dependencies, I hope that doesn’t screw anything up.  If I remember correctly from when KDE 4.0 first came out they specifically named the port KDE4 instead of just KDE so that there would not be conflicts on systems that had both versions installed.  after it finished I ran a “sudo pkgdb -F” it found a lot of stale dependencies and fixed them, one thing I noticed fly by was firefox 3.0.## which tells me I need to check my firefox and see if it is 3.0 or 3.6…

22. 10% researched only.  Get Picasa installed and working, this will be just like chrome and will require using RPM packages.