FreeBSD exasperation

spoom said:
Perhaps my system is too advanced for FreeBSD 9.0 - I always had modest systems and things went fairly well, but now I have a really fine system that's OC'd to 47ghz with 16gb of ...

Before doing anything else, set your clock speed back to normal (really, there's no need to overclock a freebsd FreeBSD box in that manner as there's no real freebsd FreeBSD software that pushes a machine that hard) and see if your various problems go away.

If you are attempting to compile stuff (heaven forbid, world) you may introduce all sorts of weird and wonderful breakage (due to mis-compilation) if your overclock isn't 100% stable and reliable.

If you have compiled/installed stuff on an OC'd box that isn't 100%, you'll want to reinstall fresh from known-good source media at stock clockspeed.

If you've overclocked your machine, all bets are off. At least I would suggest: set clockspeed to standard, install base, install/compile apps THEN overclock once you have your box set up to a known good baseline.
 
Believe me, the system is quite stable. I have been able to install and update just about everything. But I have now learned that there is nothing sacred about all the instructions in the handbook or in the advice on the forums.
From years of trying to figure out what is wrong with the installations, I have finally understood that the only way to get things working is through stubborn tweaking and manually trying different options, things can get fixed.
For example, I have never yet had a so-called "normal" installation of Xorg and the video configuration. Hal us useless as tits on a boar hog. The Nvidia nvidia-configure is useless and just messes up a good manual configuration. Other broken installations have to be meticulously investigated and corrected, if possible. And then, there are all sorts of gremlins that lurk in the cracks between ports and packages. Ooooh, wow... and then for some unknown reason a reinstall that has not worked for many attempts miraculously works.
Occasionally, someone on the forums catches one's glitch or typo or triggers a little lamp in the dark areas of the brain and you find a possible path to enlightenment...
But, in the end, you've wasted so much time you might as well go back to the typewriter.
And, more often than not, well meaning would-be gurus just don't read the problem and jump to conclusions about someone's problem.
I guess the bottom line on all this is that it would be so much better to listen to (read ?) the problem. In the early years, help was much easier and nicer; now the problems are much more complex and the fixing is getting more and more sloppy.
Ciao!
 
Talk to Nvidia about their software. It's their software. Hal works fine for the 8 years I've been using FreeBSD. In those eight years, I've put FreeBSD on 10 boxes, from a PIII through a Core2 duo made by Gateway, Dell, and custom built using Asus boards and another I can't think of, all while mixing and matching components as they're given to me by Windows users "updating" their systems. Yet I've never failed to get a basic system up and running using either packages and ports within a few hours, and all my knowledge has come from this board and the handbook.

My background is as an electronic engineer, not a sys admin or software guy. If you aren't able to get FreeBSD up and running consistently, then it's your hardware. While I've had frustrating moments with ports in the past, I've never had a problem getting a basic system up and running, including xorg, nvidia drivers and hal. And it's easier to get that done today than ever before.
 
I second that. I've been running FreeBSD in various environments since 1999. My point wasn't merely to blame your hardware; my point was that running out of spec (overclocked) when trying to diagnose aberrant behavior is not a recipe for success. It is an unknown, and when trying to troubleshoot, eliminating as many unknowns as possible is a good thing.
 
Don't use a "new release" by a "new release team" called stable simply because they say so! That's what I've been seeing.

Stick with the stable release you liked, keep your ear on the rail, upgrade only if all sounds quiet :)
 
debguy, maybe you should use FreeBSD for a while before you start handing out misguided or non-applicable advice on these forums?
 
Back
Top