FreeBSD – Page 13 – Trond's place

Some of my servers are running a fairly old version of FreeBSD/i386. I began researching how to upgrade them from stable/8 to stable/10 via stable/9. It’s pretty straightforward, but there are some pitfalls you should avoid.

None of the below is relevant as of 2014-06-06, other than the possible need of reverting sys/dev/pci/pci.c. I have confirmed that FreeBSD/i386 stable/8 r267147 works as expected on Dell OptiPlex GX260. If you happen to run FreeBSD/i386 stable/8 on older Dell desktop PCs, like an OptiPlex GX260, you might want to back out r262226 prior […]

While compiling a custom kernel for FreeBSD/amd64 base/head r264077, I began wondering how old is the oldest source file, how young is the youngest? This is the command I devised: The oldest source files are: The youngest source file is: That’s a span of about 10.815 years.

I grew tired of handholding portupgrade because of the latter’s inability to handle new dependencies. The script below is the result of my frustration. The script is available for downloading at http://ximalas.info/~trond/create-zfs/canmount/upgrade-outdated-ports.sh.

While pondering why darkstat all of a sudden shows corrupted timestamps when running on FreeBSD/amd64 stable/9, I wrote a small program to decode the export format. The program is available using svn co svn://svn.ximalas.info/darkstattype or http://svnweb.ximalas.info/darkstattype/. The license is the 2-clause BSD license.

I’m probably not paying enough attention to new developments in FreeBSD after all. After updating the installed ports in my VMs running base/head and base/stable/10, X11 stopped working. It turns out the new version of X.org requires KMS and what not in the kernel. This doesn’t fare well with VMs running inside VirtualBox. The solution? […]

If you’re like me, eager to test new stuff in FreeBSD, you might as well run a virtualized FreeBSD laboratory on your desktop. I use Oracle VirtualBox, but you might as well use Microsoft Hyper-V, real hardware, or some other contraption. Couple this with ZFS and boot environments, and you’re even able to rapidly revert […]

Is it just me or does portupgrade 2.4.12,2 have issues detecting changes in a port’s dependencies, particularly added dependencies?

I tried FreeBSD base/head with only an IPv6 address configured on the NIC. While installing some ports, I soon ran into the problem of living in more or less total isolation.

Update 2015-01-05: I was more or less forced to adopt VT, UTF-8, KMS, and DRM2 when I upgraded my laptop from stable/9 to stable/10 in the time between Christmas of 2014 and New Year of 2015. My laptop, a Dell Latitude D531 of mid-2007 design, is equipped with the AMD/ATI Radeon X1270 GPU. What an […]

Category: FreeBSD

Upgrade FreeBSD/i386 from stable/8 to stable/10 via stable/9

FreeBSD/i386 stable/8 on Dell OptiPlex GX260

Youngest and oldest source file in FreeBSD base/head

Coping with portupgrade’s inability to handle new dependencies

Decoding darkstat’s export format

WITHOUT_NEW_XORG=yes → true

Your own virtualized desktop FreeBSD lab

portupgrade and issues with added dependencies

FreeBSD and IPv6 only – February 2014

FreeBSD VT aka newcons in base/head