Solved Help needed for old noob

[dalpets]

This old noob has been using Windows since 3.1 & there has been a lot of windows hand holding along the way, plus a smattering of linux.
Now I have got the bug to try FreeNas with zfs, not realising the dramatic paradigm shift needed to work with the command line & the vi editor etc.
Nevertheless, I have spent quite a few hours in my twilight years lately, learning bsd basics. I've found it a steep learning curve!

I'm part way through reading 'Absolute BSD' because of the author's recommendation in 'building a FreeNas home server'. I also have 'Free BSD mastery' in the wings for later reading & I am reading the bsd Journal. I am expecting the receipt of a Supermicro server board shortly & ECC memory for this FN home server, as a separate build to the FreeBSD system that I have running at the moment. I am doing all of this as a learning experience with the aim of eventually becoming a proficient freebsd user (if I have enough time left) .

The problem I have now is getting the real 9.2 system working with networking. I went back to this older iteration because later iso's weren't working with the older hardware that I have available.

Ifconfig shows flags for Sk0, nfe0, plip0, lo0, but only sk0 is shown as active. It also has provision for host name, IPv4 gateway, name server, IPv4 address & domain. The netmask is automatically shown as 255.255.255.0. These blank provisions need to be filled in but I am at a loss to know what to enter into each & I need help on this, please.
Ifconfig also quotes inet 192.168.1.105 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
I have edited /etc/rc.conf by adding 'ifconfig_Sk0=SYNCDHCP'
In the case of the domain I assume it needs to be paid for, but this is only a hobby exercise, so do I really have to pay for a domain name to get networking working? If not is there an alternative approach to satisfy the requirement?
One other thing I would also like help on is a recommendation for an non-flakey internet browser in FBSD. Over at the fresh ports website too many browsers seem to have serious bug problems for multiple users that would make their use unacceptable, and in the case of Firefox there are apparently so many dependancies that undoing the package would be a veritable nightmare.

Could you help please?
Thank You
Brenton

 

[SirDice]

The problem I have now is getting the real 9.2 system working with networking.

Don't. FreeBSD 9.2 has been End-of-Life since December 2014 and is not supported any more.

I went back to this older iteration because later iso's weren't working with the older hardware that I have available.

Try 11.2, there are indeed some booting issues with 12.0 in some cases.

In the case of the domain I assume it needs to be paid for

Nope. Just pick something you like. For example:

dice@molly:~ % hostname -f
molly.dicelan.home

It's actually somewhat irrelevant, at least from a networking point of view. It only becomes relative when you implement things like DNS, then it's convenient to have the actual hostname line up with the DNS information but this only serves to prevent confusion, there's nothing dictating it. All machines in my home network use the dicelan.home domain, I also have it set up with DNS domains internally but none of those domains are officially registered. There's no need for it, their intended use is for my internal network only.

and in the case of Firefox there are apparently so many dependancies that undoing the package would be a veritable nightmare.

No, it's actually quite easy. Just pkg delete firefox to remove the package itself, then pkg autoremove to remove all the (now unneeded) dependencies.

 

[malavon]

In the case of the domain I assume it needs to be paid for

Just an addition to SirDice, it's even possible to put just a pc name inside. All I have in /etc/rc.conf is

hostname="limbo"

Regarding uninstalling the packages, I'd like to add that it's actually super easy, barely an inconvenience

 

[hukadan]

While there is no need to use a registered domain in the hostname, using one can prevent useless root DNS server queries. Invalid TLD queries represent a good proportion of their load (source):

 

[dalpets]

Very helpful replies to date but could anyone help me on the issue now highlighted in blue in my OP? Thanks a lot.

 

[tingo]

You got some advice already: do not install and attempt to use and old, unsupported version of FreeBSD unless you can manage that without asking questions about it here. Asking questions about unsupported versions here are against the rules for this forum.
If the newest version (12.0) doesn't work, try the next newest version (11.2).

 

[zirias@]

About the hostname: If you don't own a domain, it's wise to use one of the reserved toplevel domains according to RFC2606 (.example, .invalid, .test) as they are guaranteed to never become public TLDs. Unfortunately, none of these are meant for a private network. If this bothers you, you could get away with one of the TLDs listed in RFC6762, Appendix G although for these, there is no strict guarantee they won't be used for public DNS some time in the future.

If you DO have a registered domain name, always use a subdomain of it for your private network.

Finally, if you don't intend to create a private network but just have a single host connected to the internet, there's no need to give it a FQDN at all, a single hostname (without dots) will do, as already mentioned.

 

[dalpets]

You got some advice already: do not install and attempt to use and old, unsupported version of FreeBSD unless you can manage that without asking questions about it here. Asking questions about unsupported versions here are against the rules for this forum.
If the newest version (12.0) doesn't work, try the next newest version (11.2).

Didn't realize that was the case, mainly because I am in a period of information overload, so some things have not had the attention they warranted.
Now using v11.2 and the networking is easy to setup. I didn't realize that 9.2 was so archaic in comparison.

 

[dalpets]

Thanks all for your contributions.