FreeBSD experience so far after switching from Linux - THe installer needs work to not crash so often

solomon

solomon

HI

I just began using FreeBSD and I love the experience. It reminds me of the old linux days when things didn't work and I had to manually fix stuff.
However, one big plus with FreeBSD is the handbook which is amazing to have everything in 1 place... mindblowing.

I wish more people would adopt it and hardware adoption would grow.

Sure, there were moments where I almost gave up due to nothing working, crashes or problems (without a clear solution from the handbook)
I'm approaching freebsd with the mind of a complete beginner so I really want to understand if I can use it to do all my work and even use it on a server..

There are plenty of quirks, and one problem I wish would be.. solved is that it would boot faster, currently it's taking a long time between rebooting to see if something works and.. editing something in the cli and retrying. I appreciated systemd for making this faster on some systems.. ONe thing I still have to figure out is a systemd type auto restarter, i probably have to use rc scripts + monit.

Installer needs work
One thing which could improve imho is the installer to work without crashing. I don't mind the old 80's look, but an option to additionally allow the user to select if (s)he wants to install a GUI would be awesome. I don't want to use another distro based on FreeBSD to provide this out of the box as I'm not a distrohopper.
Because the installer crashes all the time it will make even hardcore linux users wonder if this system is rockstable(which it sure looks like)

Example if wifi/lan setup goes wrong, it will then crash in the next steps, requiring a restart to work
It will randomly crash .. in so many different situations that nothing works anymore and you need to restart the device.
This is super annoying as good install might require anywhere from 10 to 30 trials, and if one step fails to work.. welll. sayanora.

Failed to get a full working a HPz620, 1x asus notebook with nvidia + intel, did get it working on an asus with radeon, and on the thinnkpad...


Thanks for being here!
 
Geezer said:
Have installed Freebsd countless times. Never had the installer crash.
Click to expand...
Well, I've had to redo the installation so many times I got tired of it because the next steps wouldn't work or I'd get the dreaded error something along the lines "we need to restart the installer" but that didn't work and I need to reboot the PC from the USB. Only on 1 single device did I not get any error, because by then I already knew what do do/not do in order to not get errors and to actually install everything without getting into trouble 😅
 
There are many people having unsatisfied experiences with FreeBSD - especially at the start, which is okay. FreeBSD ain't not a system for everybody, and no OS can fulfill all demands, wishes, and hopes.
This is completely okay.

This "80s looks" of the installer is simply that FreeBSD doesn't come with a GUI by default, because you need a GUI for having a installer with a GUI, for which the GPU's suiting kmod needs to be installed, configured, and running, which is not done automatically by default, because many systems (headless servers for example) neither need, nor want a GUI, hence the text-only installer. All what's needed is there. If you want looks, you need and can install them.
FreeBSD wasn't neither designed for turnkey workstations, only, nor to look good, but primarily to work for different purposes.

But your issues I simply cannot see.
I installed FreeBSD many, many times, and sometimes even FreeBSD crashes - but I've never seen the installer crash.

Maybe - maybe - your hardware does make some problems, and causes the crashes. Looks like a memory issue to me; I recommend to run memtest first, before you continue with anything.
Maybe you was going at it with all your Linux experience, and tried to do things which you are used to with old, or some weird Linux installations, so you interfered somehow with the installation process, because you felt it was right this way, or you could do it better. I don't know.
Maybe you didn't use the official installation media, got the image file from some other sources, or tried some very new yet not released version, mixing different things with different versions from different sources (typical was to use the GPU kernel mods from the manufacturer's homepage instead using the ones offered by FreeBSD's ports, or other sources than from official FreeBSD servers)...Especially many Linux guys are almost mad for must have always the very most recent version number on everything. I don't know.
With FreeBSD this ain't going to work out of the box. FreeBSD is (tries) to be a congruent system. At least for the start stick to that.

I don't know, what really happend. But to me this cannot be a FreeBSD related problem, above all not the installer.
Since you took your time to post your experience you're interested in FreeBSD.
So my recommendation was to wipe your machine clean (do the memtest first! [ensure your hardware is okay {lose wire on a drive can also be a source for troubles, as also an extremely dusty heatsink, so the cooler doesn't work right, and the CPU quickly overheats even at light loads...}])
Then get a copy of the official 14.3-RELEASE image from an official server, dd it to a flash drive, do the installation all over again, as simple as possible, just with only what the installer offers you, and what's described in the handbook - no "manual, individual extras" (for the start.)
Then come back and tell, if it still crashes.
I bet it won't. :cool:
 
The only "crashes" I've had are caused by wifi cards, realtek usually (unfortunatelly one of the most common chips in use) and problems with acpi. Thats why before installing you should check the Hardware Notes and the Handbook.

Other crashes could be caused by faulty hardware, ram and drives make sure that these are working right with corresponding utilities like Memtest86+ and smartmontools
 
I've never seen a crash with the installer in 30+ years. The only issues I've ever had was messing up filesystem creation back when the default was to have a slew of them and I'd get the allocations wrong and then have to go through the configuration again - that was a long time ago.
 
Welcome to the forum! Next time, please state which FreeBSD release you're referring to.

I can see where you might find any BSD to be quirky. Back in the eighties, I found BSD 4.x quirky as compared to AT&T UNIX. It's mostly about what you're accustomed to using.

I've had the 14.3 installer bomb during Atheros wireless configuration. You can't configure the regulatory domain and country. As a workaround, it can be manually configured post install.

The whole GUI thing, I get it and for what it's worth, their working on it. It also probably worth noting that until the advent of the 386 microprocessor, BSD ran on big iron; not personal computers. A GUI was historically a bolt on upgrade and not part of the core UNIX operating system.
 
I have to jump on the bandwagon, especially when compared to Linux. A FreeBSD install, basic, no GUI, set up root, network, one user, takes me as little as 3 minutes. Compared with some Linux versions with GUI installers that will take several minutes, hang at various spots with no indication why, and other annoyances. The simplicity of FreeBSD's installer is one of its strong points. I'm going to point to an old article that Freddie Cash wrote, that he let me put on my pages, that point out the versions. It's old, it's from FreeBSD 6 days I think, but it's still, IMO, useful to tell the difference between STABLE, which often isn't, and RELEASE. It mentions using cvsup which isn't used anymore, but explains the differences.

 
So answering your questions:
I was trying out version 15 STABLE which I now found out is development/unstable. So that's probably the issue to start with. I even tried 14.3 on one device and had a similar experience.

As I already stated, when I say "crash" it gets into a state where it simply will not continue and I can't do anything unless I reboot the machine.
This means that if at any step it gets into that FAILED STATE, no further step will work, resulting in tens of different restarts to get it working.
This can happen at any step EIther by configuring wifi, ethernet and if it fails to configure WIFI/ethernet if I for example select "auto detect" and it fails and go manual or auto again, the it will enter in that failed state where it "crashes" It will simply state something along the lines (from memory) "A STEP failed/aborted. would you like to exit or restart?" and It prompts to begin again with the configuration, when I do begin again, I find out I can't proceed as nothing works. I once thought I could go further but at selecting the discs it would not detect anything.
This can occur and has occured at any step on given hardware. There, I hadn't had ANY issue with any linux version so It may or may not be faulty hardware.

I did not do anything in the command line except on one system where UEFI failed to install where I had to manually install it.

From 4 machines, on only ONE of them did it work without issues, and that was because I already knew what to select/do/not do in order to not get it in such a bad state.
Each machine had different quirks. ON one laptop ZFS encryption would fail when adding a user after creating the user resulting in... the whole process needing to be done again
There are plenty of quirks I did not document due to the fact that I imagined it must be a combination of 100's of things.
Yet again, there is a strong survivorship bias here so let's take that into account please.


Thanks for the answers.
 
sko said:
I've only seen crashes of the installer with failing hardware (bad memory)

I also never need to reboot a FreeBSD system to "see if something works". This is not Windows.
Click to expand...
Please enlighten me how to set up rc.conf without needing to restart the machine when testing drivers, XORG config, sddm or other gui's that might start automatically, wifi drivers issues,etc

I'm really curious how to achieve that in freebsd without requiring a restart.
 
Maturin said:
There are many people having unsatisfied experiences with FreeBSD - especially at the start, which is okay. FreeBSD ain't not a system for everybody, and no OS can fulfill all demands, wishes, and hopes.
This is completely okay.

This "80s looks" of the installer is simply that FreeBSD doesn't come with a GUI by default, because you need a GUI for having a installer with a GUI, for which the GPU's suiting kmod needs to be installed, configured, and running, which is not done automatically by default, because many systems (headless servers for example) neither need, nor want a GUI, hence the text-only installer. All what's needed is there. If you want looks, you need and can install them.
FreeBSD wasn't neither designed for turnkey workstations, only, nor to look good, but primarily to work for different purposes.

But your issues I simply cannot see.
I installed FreeBSD many, many times, and sometimes even FreeBSD crashes - but I've never seen the installer crash.

Maybe - maybe - your hardware does make some problems, and causes the crashes. Looks like a memory issue to me; I recommend to run memtest first, before you continue with anything.
Maybe you was going at it with all your Linux experience, and tried to do things which you are used to with old, or some weird Linux installations, so you interfered somehow with the installation process, because you felt it was right this way, or you could do it better. I don't know.
Click to expand...
Nah, I followed the installation process without doing anything in the CLI as I already have so much to lear about FreeBSD.
Maturin said:
Maybe you didn't use the official installation media, got the image file from some other sources, or tried some very new yet not released version, mixing different things with different versions from different sources (typical was to use the GPU kernel mods from the manufacturer's homepage instead using the ones offered by FreeBSD's ports, or other sources than from official FreeBSD servers)...Especially many Linux guys are almost mad for must have always the very most recent version number on everything. I don't know.
Click to expand...
Guilty of using the 15"STABLE" version.
Maturin said:
With FreeBSD this ain't going to work out of the box. FreeBSD is (tries) to be a congruent system. At least for the start stick to that.

I don't know, what really happend. But to me this cannot be a FreeBSD related problem, above all not the installer.
Since you took your time to post your experience you're interested in FreeBSD.
Click to expand...
Yeah I'm interested in FreeBSD I'm writing this from a laptop running FreeBSD (yes, I still have some issues, sorted some out.. it's a learning experience). And wouldn't have taken the time to write nor respond, nor try it on so many different devices if I wasn't truly interested. Layer 8-11 problem :))
Maturin said:
So my recommendation was to wipe your machine clean (do the memtest first! [ensure your hardware is okay {lose wire on a drive can also be a source for troubles, as also an extremely dusty heatsink, so the cooler doesn't work right, and the CPU quickly overheats even at light loads...}])
Then get a copy of the official 14.3-RELEASE image from an official server, dd it to a flash drive, do the installation all over again, as simple as possible, just with only what the installer offers you, and what's described in the handbook - no "manual, individual extras" (for the start.)
Then come back and tell, if it still crashes.
I bet it won't. :cool:
Click to expand...
As I already experimented this on multiple devices so many times I really would like to avoid the installer experiences again. Is there a way if I have geli encryption setup with zfs to use the same disk without wiping everything ex from /home/users ? I'm also new to how ZFS works and on LInux I used to have multiple partitions, I know that LUKS reinstallation was a pain so if possible I'd want to avoid that in the meantime
 
solomon said:
Please enlighten me how to set up rc.conf without needing to restart the machine when testing drivers, XORG config, sddm or other gui's that might start automatically, wifi drivers issues,etc

I'm really curious how to achieve that in freebsd without requiring a restart.
Click to expand...

you can load drivers via kldload(8)
xorg can be started via startx(1) (but it is usually run by a graphical session/login manager). running X sessions can always be terminated and re-started without the need for a full reboot. (e.g. forcefully via ctrl+alt+backspace). It's usually sufficient to just restart the login manager via service
sddm and other services that have been enabled in rc.conf can be started/stopped/reloaded via service(8) (which will source the settings from rc.conf)

again: this is not windows (or in case of rc.conf/boot related stuff: systemd/linux). the whole startup process and configuration in rc.conf is transparent and is always just an automation for some command(s) that can be carried out manually (e.g. ifconfig, service etc pp). You can also easily check how a specific service is started/handled by looking at it's rc-file, which is a plain standard and readable shellscript.
 
solomon said:
As I already stated, when I say "crash" it gets into a state where it simply will not continue and I can't do anything unless I reboot the machine.
This means that if at any step it gets into that FAILED STATE, no further step will work, resulting in tens of different restarts to get it working.
This can happen at any step EIther by configuring wifi, ethernet and if it fails to configure WIFI/ethernet if I for example select "auto detect" and it fails and go manual or auto again, the it will enter in that failed state where it "crashes" It will simply state something along the lines (from memory) "A STEP failed/aborted. would you like to exit or restart?" and It prompts to begin again with the configuration, when I do begin again, I find out I can't proceed as nothing works. I once thought I could go further but at selecting the discs it would not detect anything.
Click to expand...
you should look up a definition of "crash".
What you describe is just the installer not being able to continue with the settings/choices you made. It even tells you this and asks you to start over. The installer even remembers your settings, so you can skip over all steps until the one where you need to make changes (I assume network settings from your vague description).
You can even switch to a shell at any point and make manual configurations, then return to the installer and continue.
 
solomon said:
Well, I've had to redo the installation so many times I got tired of it because the next steps wouldn't work or I'd get the dreaded error something along the lines "we need to restart the installer" but that didn't work and I need to reboot the PC from the USB. Only on 1 single device did I not get any error, because by then I already knew what do do/not do in order to not get errors and to actually install everything without getting into trouble 😅
Click to expand...
Are you accepting defaults or trying to specify "things"?
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Of note: The OP is installing 15.0-STABLE As a first time user, that's not what I would suggest he try first and I question if he understands what STABLE means versus RELEASE.
Click to expand...
STABLE vs RELEASE was my first wall a few years back when I decided to try FreeBSD coming from Debian. I was installing STABLE thinking it means the same as Stable in the Linux world. Boy was I wrong.
 
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