Solved [SOLVED] Suitability Question

dcbdbis

dcbdbis

Good afternoon,

I am a semiretired consultant/programmer. I am 56. Been with Linux since 2000.

Last week I was awarded a bid to convert Simla, Colorado's public works infrastructure to a linux based solution. I currently use Arch Linux. Arch Linux is not easy to install, but easy to maintain...but is also bleeding edge to the point of updates breaking a system. If I am going to be setting a server, and deploying ~10-14 laptops.......I don't want this. I have already done several installs and provisioning of resources of way back before the 8.* days of FreeBSD, but not of this magnitude all at once.

The major linux distros add too much "stuff" to the systems automatically that I do not want on the cities laptops. I want the surgical precision of the ports collection to selectively add what they need. And I don;t want updates breaking things. IN fact I don;t even want the city doing updates at all...that will be in my ongoing infrastructure maintenance portion of the contract.

I am looking for a stable platform that in my mind FreeBSD is the obvious regarding stability. My concern is the labor in maintenance costs I may be faced with deploying FreeBSD across across ~ 10-14 laptops.......

FreeBSD is a shoe-in for a server.

I am asking for those more experienced than me with FreeBSD to comment about the suitabliltiy of FreeBSD on a desktop (laptop)...LibreOffice, Firefox, with openVPN connections to/from laptops and servers.

I am also requesting to know how much "pain" I am in for regarding a learning curve deploying FreeBSD systematically, instead of the odd laptop or so. I ask this to see if I need to go with a FreeBSD desktop spinoff. Personally, I'd rather go to the parent, which is FreeBSD.

The laptops all come with Win8, and as such all have EFI. Not all Linux's play nice with EFI.

No flames intended, and certainly no trolling intended.

All feedback will be appreciated.

Sincerelt and respectfully,

Dave
 
Re: Suitability Question

A lot of issues to discover. First, you'll have to figure out how to get the laptop to boot without Secure Boot. Then there is hardware support for the video card and wireless interface.

For updates, consider sysutils/puppet or sysutils/cfengine.
 
Re: Suitability Question

I found out early about secure boot, and have disabled it.

Dave
 
Re: Suitability Question

I only dabble with FreeBSD, but I think we're in a same boat: I use Arch Linux for my desktop (laptop) and FreeBSD for my server (I find it's the closest to Arch in the server space).

I installed FreeBSD on my laptop and got everything working except my video card (Intel HD 4000). Everything is software rendered, so dragging windows is choppy and anything that requires rendering eats CPU. This is a funded goal for 2014, so I'm hoping it's usable by 10.1. I haven't seen anything to confirm or deny that this is a goal for the porting effort. It seems Intel HD 3000 should work though if you compile all gui-related ports with certain options (https://wiki.freebsd.org/Intel_GPU). Also, FreeBSD is not known for being battery-friendly, so keep that in mind.

The user-experience isn't the most important, but it's something to keep in mind.
 
Re: Suitability Question

Hardware would be my biggest concern, especially the wireless driver and suspend/resume. Other than that, FreeBSD is very easy to administer nowadays with the help of freebsd-update, pkgng, and poudriere. Just set up a pkg repository on the server you mentioned with the desired packages (use poudriere to build them) and point the laptops to it. I would also suggest installing releases with extended support to minimize maintenance.
 
Re: Suitability Question

I appreciate the input from everyone.

The changes in system maintenace for the 10.* release piqued my interest.

So to recap...am I to understand that the 10.* release series, and the streamlined maintenance tools provided therin.......provide an easier to maintain FreeBSD installtion?

I know hardware is more of an issue with FreeBSD than with Linux...I'm totally OK with that.....I need stability and predictability more than anything else..... And a linux distro whose update process requires admin intervention on every installation they service every stinking 6 months, causes me headaches and a lot of labor and lost time that I cannot bill for. Because I have yet to have the "upgrades" go smoothly, regardless of Linux distro in use.

I don't want that in my new project where I am deploying FreeBSD across an entire cities infrastructure, from servers to laptops.

So if someone can confirm I am understanding that 10.* is much more friendly and easier to maintain.....Then I'll install to a demo laptop and present it, along with marking this thread as solved.....

Thank you again for the responses,

Sincerely and respectfully,


Dave
 
Re: Suitability Question

I think one question that needs to be asked is what is the intended use case for the laptop users?

Are we talking about users that have to share documents with other organization (state, federal etc) that forces them to use MS Word's XML format? Do the users need to run proprietary software that only runs on a certain OS. Any database interactions? I'm sure someone is going to want to use MS Access!

Other than that, on a laptop get the suspend and resume features to work would be something to make sure of.
 
Re: Suitability Question

Good point,

I apologize I didn't provide this information initially.

My project is a complete IT infrastructure replacement for the City of Simla Colorado, with additional automation for their Public Works. Monitoring of water wells, wastewater treatment plant, meter reading, etc. A central server will be used as the datastore (postgreSQL), and the laptops will be used to attach to the server, and monitor the facility data. Think nagios, only instead of monitoring a datacenter, it's monitoring Building Automation Systems (BAS) where the monitored systems have small embedded controllers that speak TCP/IP (by others), where the server polls them at a specified interval and stores these in a graphical manner (written by me). The client laptops then receive specified alarms when something goes wrong in any of the monitored systems. I don't know if I can use nagios, or another already available monitoring system until the city decides on whose BAS controllers thay are going to use out in the field on their monitoring stations.

Right now, the city employees drive routes to physically check on the various systems, plus do repair work. Simla wants the monitoring taken over by an automated system to free up their employees to focus on repair and service calls, rather than a bunch of windshield time driving quite a distance. Right now the only way they know that something is wrong, is by a property owner calling in and informing the city of a problem, or one of their employees finds a problem during their once/day inspection route. In both cases, the city is left in the reactive/jump through hoops mode, whereas they want to be proactive and fix stuff before it breaks mode.

So the application for the employee's laptops are FreeBSD as a desktop, running MATE or XFCE (in the ports tree, I abhore Gnome3), with an application that I am writing in Code::Blocks using the wxWidgets library. That is if I can't find any suitable already built mechanism that I can integrate with their BAS system directly, such as a nagios or something else.

It's an system where the server monitors the public works BAS system, and then displays that data in web format, served by Apache or BSD's preferred web server......
The laptop's will use a web browser, or possibly (if the server side ends up being custom coded) a client application I write with C::B, where the FreeBSD laptop will be polling the central server and displaying the monitored data in my client app.

This system will also generate client billing/invoicing for water/sewer/trash services. In time, eventually, it will also have bill payment options online, but that is Phase II, not this initial project. Bill payment will continue to be manual for the immediate future.

Simla is not a large city, and has received a federal government grant to fund all of this. This grant automatically renews itself for the next 5 years....

Connectivity will be SSL through an OpenVPN tunnel to a non-standard port# for security reasons, just like I have done for a small contracting client I have already setup in Linux. The City has it's own independent ISP that I can work with to isolate this specified port from incoming connections from the outside world. So betten SSL/OpenVPN, and the ISP 's assistance...It's going to be real secure.

The rest of the city will be using LibreOffice. I've already demonstrated that to them and they have accepted it as a base. Their official format for correspondence with county/state/and federal entities is a password protected PDF format. So CUPS will have it's own native CUPS-PDF-printer driver installed.

The other functionality will be Libreoffice WRITER, Libreoffice CALC, Libreoffice IMPRESS, and Skype. Skype will be used to hold meetings between various city managers and their employees without requiring them to be present at City Hall. The Mayor will also be using Skype capabilities external to the cities own infrastructure to work with county/state/federal officials. Kinda like the Veterans Administration has done. I am a Vietnam Era USMC veteran who was injured in the line of duty. The VA uses Skype to connect a veteran to specialists that may be out of state, working with a local physician to resolve an issue. It's sounds highly impersonal, and to an extent it is....but it does work. My point in the former sentences is that Skype is an acceptable standard for government secure communications...But county/state/federal governments uses their own secure servers for Skype, with additional encryption, specified by them (obviously).

The summary is the city doesn't have some wild esoteric needs.....just an infrastructre changeout using basic everyday applications that are in the ports tree already.

My needs as the engineer/consultant/provisioner, is stability/reliability for my client (the city), and controlled ongoing $$ cost for server/client maintenance. I can't tender an open ended T&M contract for ongoing maintenance after system instantiation, I have to tender a fixed number to my quote......So I could potentially bid too low for their maintenance contract...and end up screwing myself.

I will be updating the cities laptops on a yearly basis. So the systems will not be vulnerable to an update breaking things, except once a year when I have all laptops in front of me, and I do the server, and the 10-14 laptops at the same time.

In my previous usage of FreeBSD in the pre 8 days.....it was quite a painful upgrade process that required a lot of labor hours by the admin to fix broken stuff. I don't want upgrades that are going to be either:

A) Excrutiatingly labor intensive.

OR

B) Requires a complete reload and reconfigure of FreeBSD from scratch.

In stating the above, I openly acknowledge that there will be some breakage. It's inevitable...that's an expected part of the gig.....I just don't want to spend 8 hours per laptop fixing the broken stuff.

And maybe that means I stay away from the ports tree (MATE for example in 9.* would not build in the ports tree).....maybe I need to stick with stricly binary packages....

So I ask here: Should I go fully ports, or fully binary...I am asking the FreeBSD community to make recommendations.....

Thank you, and I hope this helps explain the expectations for FreeBSD in this project.

And as far as funding, when I helped the city with budgetary numbers for their grant...I included monies to give to the distro I choose.....So for FreeBSD, there will be a significant financial benefit to the project, and in addition, I have also reserved monies for hiring a FreeBSD expert locally, if I get myself stuck, or don't understand a technology that has a specific BSD spin, where things are done very differently in linux.


Sincerely and respectfully,

Dave
 
Re: Suitability Question

I am down in Pueblo, just under a 2-hour drive from Simla. While I am no expert, I have been testing out FreeBSD on the server side for a while, and working some on desktop side as well. If need be, I'd be willing to help out.
 
Re: Suitability Question

Thank you jardows!

I sent you a PM with contact info..............


Dave.....
 
Re: Suitability Question

Thank quite a project, seems like it will be fun. First thing that comes to my mind is do the tech laptop really need to be full desktops environments? Maybe something scaled down like Openbox with menu additions and icons for the application that are only necessary for their field work. Personal I'd probably use i3 and bind each application to it own workspace and have them auto start on logging in. Also that might cut down on some of the upgrade worries since you'd have less component than a full blown desktop environment.
 
Re: Suitability Question

It's not that bad actually. I met with the mayor and city council today. Simla is not a large town.

They need as much Building Automtation (BAS) for public works, as they need a server and laptop infrastructure.

As far as a simplified desktop, can't do. They are all windows centric users, thus I need a traditional desktop. Their desktop needs are basic, reading/writing CD's/DVD's, USB sticks, Libreoffice, and a mail server/client setup. The FreeBSD server is going to come out of the ground monitoring BAS equipment for phase I. Phase II will be setting up a mail server and ecommerce for folks to pay their water, sewer and trash bills online, with an interface to their CC processor. I will not be storing cc numbers, nor processing the CC's directly on FreeBSD the server. I don't want that kind of liability.

I learned that we are going to integrate the Police department on the server in an encrypted folder, or a jail. I need to read more on jails to determine the best applications of a jail, which I do not understand properly at present, other than conceptual. Only the Police Chief, Mayor, and designated Council Members will have the password for that encrypted folder.

I have been given a laptop to setup and return to the city council for all to look at, "test drive" and approve. It's going to be either XFCE, or Cinnamon on the desktop......XFCE and Cinnamon are easy to teach "dyed in the wool" Windows users (pre-WIn8).

None of the council members nor the mayor are younger, so the look of the interface of Android phones/Gnome3 is not to their liking. Not at all. That got settled in < 60 seconds today. Most of them do not like their smartphones touch interface.

So the laptop (user demos) will be dual booted. Manjaro Linux with Cinnamon, and FreeBSD with XFCE UNLESS someone points me to a wiki on how to install Cinnamon on FreeBSD. I do not see it in the ports tree.

The server, is FreeBSD, period the end. I would prefer FreeBSD on their laptops...but they want two desktops to compare to so that they, the customer in this case, can select their preference.

Thanks for the reply!


Sincerely and respectfully,

Dave

PS: I have one more post I owe this thread before I mark it solved......tonight (as we speak) FreeBSD is installing on their laptop (A fresh Asus A550C). I will finish it's "test drive" under XFCE by end of this weekend. I will post back to this thread on my results, experiences, and comments.
 
Re: Suitability Question

dcbdbis said:
So the laptop (user demos) will be dual booted. Manjaro Linux with Cinnamon, and FreeBSD with XFCE UNLESS someone points me to a wiki on how to install Cinnamon on FreeBSD. I do not see it in the ports tree.
Click to expand...

I don't know anything about this, but the PC-BSD release 10 includes Cinnamon and Mate as supported desktops.
 
Re: Suitability Question

roddierod said:
dcbdbis said:
So the laptop (user demos) will be dual booted. Manjaro Linux with Cinnamon, and FreeBSD with XFCE UNLESS someone points me to a wiki on how to install Cinnamon on FreeBSD. I do not see it in the ports tree.
Click to expand...

I don't know anything about this, but the PC-BSD release 10 includes Cinnamon and Mate as supported desktops.
Click to expand...

It supports XFCE4 desktop as well. The PC-BSD install also has a very easy ability to save your "install configuration" to a USB after an install, and allows for loading of an "install configuration" during install setup. Would come in handy for your fleet of laptops, but not to say FreeBSD doesn't have a similar mechanism.
 
Re: Suitability Question

Thank you segfault for the reply,

I am downloading PCBSD as I write this. My experience with FreeBSD last night and this AM hasn't been the best experience I have ever had. "X" is causing issues. UEFI (pretty much all laptops) these days was a genuine P.I.A. Even when I had CSM enabled, the FreeBSD install still wanted a GPT partition....while this particular laptop would not accept a GPT partition in CSM mode. It wanted a pure MBR partitions. Found that solution off of the forum of a link off of a link off of a link. I was surprised given the high quality documentation that the handbook didn't have a section for GTP, and another for MBR. So this tells me that the server I put together for SImla, had better damned well not be UEFI. And not all CSM modes in BIOS are created equal either,...so flakey implementation of CSM by MFG's derails what could be a smooth install.

In FreeBSD's defense, UEFI is not well implemented in the OSS community at large. BSD, Linux, Solaris, and OpenIndiana can all share the "love" on this one! :) .....yet most hardware shipping now is shipping with UEFI.....I'm a little confused/puzzled that the OSS community didn't see this train wreck coming and be proactive.....

Other issues is that the X server hangs when I go to logoff a DE. And it takes my keyboard and mouse with it, leaving me with me no choice other than to tap the power button and let the ACPI shutdown process takeover. And yes, I have the appropriate daemons enabled per the wiki in /etc/rc.conf. FreeBSD is well documented and I am gratefull for that. I followed that wiki to the letter. I expected a bootable installation out of the box as a result...and I couldn't make it do this after 4 separate installs. I had no opton in the "auto" process of partitioning to tell it to use a MBR base instead of a GPT base. Even when I manually setup a MBR install, using the official installer always wanted to overwrite it as GPT...SO thsi I followed a different forum thread on how to properly setup a MBD partitioning scheme for FreeBSD, and once I did so. Magic!...It all worked and booted.

Browsing the forums last night...I am not alone in "X" problems in FreeBSD, and I tried several remedies offered. None of which worked. So it may be that I need to wait until 10.1 shows up to address the "X" issues. "X" is a base requirement for everything I am about to do out at Simla.

So while FreeBSd is still my server of choice...I just can't deploy it on a desktop until the X issues are resolved. I'll look at PC-BSD in a few minutes for laptop/desktop usage.

Curios.....Why would PC-BSD have Cinnamon (which tells me it has been ported to some extent).....and FreeBD not? They must be using the Linux compatibility layer or something if it has not been officially ported.

Now I am not about to tantrum about DE's. I could make XFCE work just as fine as well for the city folks.....It's just that Cinnamon in my experience is easier for me to teach Windows Centric users...and causes them the least culture shock...Which menas I get less frustrated phone calls. While I want FreeBSD as my pass throughout Simla.....I just cannot professionally demo a system to the City council where I and a bunch of others are having X issues.....and the issue does seem (in the foums) to visit those of us with Intel 3rd gen graphics GPU's than other GPU's. But it is not exclusive to Intel GPU's.

So looking forward to a patch for FreeBSD's "X" problems. But in the meantime, FreeBSD on the server and PC-BSD on the laptops may be the way to go.....

As this is a FreeBSD forum, I'll refrain from reviewing it in these forums as I feel that would be inappropriate.... I will report back if PC-BSD meets Simla's needs. If it does...then I have a plan I can go with.... I mean a FreeBSD server and a PC-BSD laptop would be eay to configure to make nice with each other. If this partnership between FreeBSD/PC-BSD meets all requirement...I'll mark this thread as SOLVED.

Again, I want to express sincerest appreciation for the community walking with me through this discovery process.......


Sincerely and respectfully,

Dave
 
UPDATE: I wrote myself a small wiki on the steps to install FreeBSD on the laptop. I can now do an install from my memory now in ~ 15 minutes.

The issue was the BIOS in this laptop when in the insecure boot mode...does not support GPT. It must be an MBR table...Once I figured this out, and read enough docs to determine the metrics for the slices needed for a classical MBR partition table.......then the installation became easy.

The auto partition scheme doesn't seem to have a way to tell it to use MBR. Using "Auto" mode for the partitioner, always creates a GPT table. For this weird laptop, I had to partition by hand.

PC-BSD regardless of the installer I choose....dies in the install when it attempts to start "X". Then the system freezes...When it does, it takes the keyboard with it leaving me no alternative other than a forced power off event.

The laptop is a genIII intel GPU, in an Asus A550CA laptop. And it is a strangley behaving laptop with anything (FreeBSD/Linux/OpenIndiana, etc)other than the shipping Win8 installation. For fellow FreeBSD'rs.......I would not select this laptop for FreeBSD. And knowing what I know now...I will select future hardware more carefully as well.

I have made the decision to move forward with FreeBSD as it encompasses all the functionality that the Simla project needs. There are a couple of issues I have yet to wring out....but I'll post that as a new thread in the appropriate forum...

Thanks again for all the responses!



Sincerely and respectfully,


Dave
 
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