FreeBSD 12.1 on The Thinkpad T60 (2)

Finally last Friday got a little time around to play a bit more with the FreeBSD install I did on the trusty T60.
Installed (via pkg) XFCE -as usual- as my Desktop Environment- things went really smooth and fast, matter of fact, took less time to install XFCE than xorg, everything thru pkg, go figure way... Maybe the XFCE packages were stored on a nearby cache of my ISP?

Disk usage right after the base install:

Filesystem            Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on

zroot/ROOT/default    287G    433M    286G     0%    /

And after installing:

pkg install xorg xfce firefox emacs-nox

HDD usage climbed to:

Filesystem            Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on

zroot/ROOT/default    286G    2.4G    284G     1%    /

The systems feels snappy, specially compared with the same setup running OpenBSD, and, it doesn't have those pesky problems I was having (WiFi drops & XFCE crashes),
Will see if next week I have time to configure things the hell up on this FreeBSD/ XFCE setup and see if this is a daily driver.

A Puffy Christmas

Spent great part of today (other than finishing a few chores and some stuff from work) playing a bit with OpenBSD on the T60.
Yeap, the quest goes on and on...
This time exclusively running CWM and taking Firefox for a spin, the thing still doesn't cut it for me.

Thinking in giving FreeBSD a complete run on the T60, that is, finishing the Base Install I did, with XFCE and all the whistles.

FreeBSD 12.1 on The Thinkpad T60

Last Thursday installed FreeBSD, that old friend mine, on the T60, mostly to give it a shot, since I had a lot of problems with OpenBSD.
This are some notes I took along the installation:

- Set Keyboard as: US - Left Caps Lock as Ctrl
- Distribution Select: Choose optional system components to install: NONE
- Network Installation: Setup wpi0 (Wireless)
- Regdomain/ country: No
- WiFi Setup: Fixed IPv4 Address on my LAN
- Mirror Selection: Brazil #3
- Partitionig: Auto (ZFS)
- ZFS Configuration: Encrypt Disks? Yes
- ZFS Configuration: Stripe - No Redundancy
- ZFS Configuration: Select HDD
- ZFS Configuration: Set passphrase
- ZFS Configuration: Init Encryption
- Connect to Server... Fetching Distribution (Base & Kernel)
- Set root passwd
- Set UTC -> No
- Setup Time Zone
- System Configuration: Services started at boot: All of them
- System Hardening: Hardening Options: All of them
- Setup regular user (Add user to wheel group)
- Exit installer and reboot

PF Sense setup (II)

A little package to show (in real time) the bandwidth use on the PF Sense firewall.
It is called "rate", and it is available from the "Available Packages" menu entry.

This package adds a table of realtime bandwidth usage by IP address to Status -> Traffic Graphs

PF Sense setup (I)

Will try to keep a journal (daily, hopefully) of what I'm doing on the PF setup.

Today got the OpenVPN up & running; it way more complex than doing so if you run, say, Endian, as your router/ firewall/ UTM solution; but once it is up and running, it seems, it feels more robust.
By far, the greatest PITA is setting up the PKI files.

This is the openvpn line to connect as client, for the moment, at least:

sudo openvpn --client --pull --comp-lzo --nobind --dev tun \
--ca ~/ca.crt --cert ~/certificate.crt --key ~/key.key \
--remote my.pf-sense.router --proto tcp

Orbis Tertius' FreeBSD notes

In the end, I got rid of it, no particular reason, maybe because Gnome was a little slow; but the box it is not a rocket either; or maybe it was that compiling the NVIDIA drivers got a little troublesome.
The thing is, I got Ubuntu, Intrepid, to be precise, on the server.

These are some notes, since on the FreeBSD made a minimal install, and then proceed to download the whole Gnome desktop; had to do this because it was impossible to install the whole thing from the CD, just like on Ubuntu 8.04 was.

The first thing I noticed is that Googling on howto make a Gnome install over the internet, every site I saw mentions that you have to add the package 'gnome2', did that, but the Gnome install waas incomplete, didn't even start, had to also install the package 'gnome-session'.
Installing all that used about 800 MB of HDD space, and got me a desktop like the one posted here.

FreeBSD Gnome Installation howto
Installing X Windows System on FreeBSD

Current FreeBSD desktop

Actually, the default one, after finishing the Gnome install.

Hello again, FreeBSD

Installed FreeBSD 7.0 on Orbis Tertius today, scrubbed its Ubuntu 8.04 install.
Mostly because I want to test is NVIDIA (Compiz, Emerald, the works) support, want to see how fast it is compared to Ubuntu's.

Just like on the Ubuntu install, I couldn't just make a regular install, had to make a minimal one, and download all the goodies I like.
Here is the dmesg:

Copyright (c) 1992-2008 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE #0: Sun Feb 24 19:59:52 UTC 2008
    root@logan.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Pentium II/Pentium II Xeon/Celeron (334.09-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x651  Stepping = 1
  Features=0x183f9ff
real memory  = 536870912 (512 MB)
avail memory = 511471616 (487 MB)
kbd1 at kbdmux0
ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
hptrr: HPT RocketRAID controller driver v1.1 (Feb 24 2008 19:59:27)
cpu0 on motherboard
pcib0:  pcibus 0 on motherboard
pir0:  on motherboard
pci0:  on pcib0
agp0:  on hostb0
pcib1:  at device 1.0 on pci0
pci1:  on pcib1
$PIR: No matching entry for 0.1.INTA
vgapci0:  mem 0xf0000000-0xf0ffffff,0xe8000000-0xefffffff irq 11 at device 0.0 on pci1
isab0:  at device 7.0 on pci0
isa0:  on isab0
atapci0:  port 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6,0x170-0x177,0x376,0xf000-0xf00f at device 7.1 on pci0
ata0:  on atapci0
ata0: [ITHREAD]
ata1:  on atapci0
ata1: [ITHREAD]
uhci0:  port 0xe000-0xe01f irq 10 at device 7.2 on pci0
uhci0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
uhci0: [ITHREAD]
usb0:  on uhci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0:  on usb0
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
piix0:  port 0x5000-0x500f at device 7.3 on pci0
Timecounter "PIIX" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 0
rl0:  port 0xe400-0xe4ff mem 0xf4001000-0xf40010ff irq 9 at device 10.0 on pci0
miibus0:  on rl0
rlphy0:  PHY 0 on miibus0
rlphy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
rl0: Ethernet address: 00:50:fc:53:ec:3a
rl0: [ITHREAD]
dc0:  port 0xe800-0xe8ff mem 0xf4000000-0xf40000ff irq 9 at device 11.0 on pci0
miibus1:  on dc0
amphy0:  PHY 1 on miibus1
amphy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
dc0: Ethernet address: 00:80:ad:80:f0:ad
dc0: [ITHREAD]
pci0:  at device 12.0 (no driver attached)
pmtimer0 on isa0
atkbdc0:  at port 0x60,0x64 on isa0
atkbd0:  irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
atkbd0: [ITHREAD]
psm0:  irq 12 on atkbdc0
psm0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
psm0: [ITHREAD]
psm0: model IntelliMouse, device ID 3
fdc0:  at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on isa0
fdc0: [FILTER]
ppc0:  at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0
ppc0: SMC-like chipset (ECP/EPP/PS2/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode
ppc0: FIFO with 16/16/8 bytes threshold
ppbus0:  on ppc0
ppbus0: [ITHREAD]
plip0:  on ppbus0
lpt0:  on ppbus0
lpt0: Interrupt-driven port
ppi0:  on ppbus0
ppc0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
ppc0: [ITHREAD]
sc0:  at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0
sio0: type 16550A
sio0: [FILTER]
sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0
sio1: type 16550A
sio1: [FILTER]
vga0:  at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
unknown:  can't assign resources (port)
unknown:  can't assign resources (memory)
unknown:  can't assign resources (port)
unknown:  can't assign resources (irq)
unknown:  can't assign resources (port)
unknown:  can't assign resources (port)
unknown:  can't assign resources (port)
unknown:  can't assign resources (port)
Timecounter "TSC" frequency 334093440 Hz quality 800
Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec
hptrr: no controller detected.
ad0: 6204MB  at ata0-master UDMA33
ad2: 76319MB  at ata1-master UDMA33
acd0: CDROM  at ata1-slave UDMA33
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a

Border-less windows for Gnome

I have searched long & far for a way or program to get rid of the window's borders on Gnome, mimicking the look Os X has.
I have found Devil's Pie, but it removes all the borders.
So, I tried editing the 'metacity-theme-1.xml' file for the theme I'm using right now Unified.

Edited these lines:


distance name="left_width" value="0"/
distance name="right_width" value="0"/
distance name="bottom_height" value="0"/


Set all the values to zero, and presto.
The thing works best with the gnome-terminal having a black background.
I have also edited the same file, before this one, to get rid of the roundered corners on the bottom of the screen.

The Presario, getting to love it

Connected it to a p*ece of crap CRT monitor I have at home.
With it, the resolution can be boosted to an amazing 1024x768 (!!!), the thing does really become usable, and far more beautiful than on the Presario's LCD.
Once the thing got a little bit more nice, I went Window Shopping... What I wanted was to get rid of the border of the windows, just like in Os X.
I haven't been able to do so, but below are some things related (or not)

Some FreeBSD and *nix links I found this weekend:

Devil's pie
A window-matching utility, inspired by Sawfish's "Matched Windows" option and the lack of the functionality in Metacity.

It is really useful, but I was looking for a way to get rid of the borders of the rxvt or gnome-terminal windows.
This one does that, but, also removes *all* the borders.
Sort of reminds me of this program wmctrl

Devil's pie configs
Samples of configurations for many programs and situations.

BSD Guides
Doing stuff with BSD, really useful site.

Laptops - Install Tricks & Release Status
Using FreeBSD on ancient hardware.

More on the Presario

Well, trying to get beyond the 800x600 resolution no the beast, I have tested it with Ubuntu and Knoppix.

I haven't been
able to get it nowhere above 800, but, in the process, I learned a couple of things:

1- Ubuntu is amazing :)
2- KDE is definitively not my cup of tea.
3- This Presario is really, really, really a piece of sh*t.

As a side note, neither Knoppix nor Ubuntu recognized my MSFT Wheel Mouse Optical, connected via USB -> PS/2 adapter, the same thing worked flawlessly on FreeBSD from day one... Go figure, and then people say that FreeBSD it is a hard, unfriendly OS...

Povera Os X

Or... running FreeBSD on a Compaq Presario piece of sh*t :)

Not much of Os X here... But, I got a Compaq Presario laptop, a really clunky box, with a 6 GB HDD, and 64 MB RAM (shared with video)
It had Windows ME, which was like saying, it had nothing on it.
Maxxed the RAM with a 512 MB stick I had form my dead iBook G3 (the Compaq only sees 311 MB, but what a hell...)

To play with it, I d'loaded FreeBSD 6.2 RELEASE (both CDs), and installed without a single problem.

Recompiled the kernel, mostly, to get rid of crud, and to get a nice, cool looking smaller font on the CLI.

The thing, running Gnome, and Epiphany it is s l o w, but usable.

The main dissapointment is the resolution, I can't get it to go upwards than 800x600 which is a major PITA; the other thing is the HDD drive, 6 GB of HDD, nowadays, is as close as nothing as you can get to... But nevertheless, it installs.

Nevertheless, for CLI work it is simply amazing, and for some lightweight browsing, it works.


I even run it with the X org composite on, having drop shadows enabled.




The theme, emulating Os X of course, it is a mixture of this three, all of them from Gnome Look:

- Kougyoku Aqua
- Unified
- Exquisite

Os X wanna be (on FreeBSD)

This one was while running Gnome, on FreeBSD, on a Toshiba laptop... The "dock" was Gdesklet's Starterbar, and the theme was: Gno-SX Gno-SX Gno-SX.
Actually, the whole thing looked kinda cool. (But only looked like that, underneath, it was a plain FreeBSD box; free but it is a lot of hard work to get things up & running)

And yet another one... Gnome, again, on top of FreeBSD, again, on the same laptop, again. The laptop was the same one I used to take the Os X86 adventure.
The same faux Dock, and the complete theme (GTK2, Metacity & icon set) on this case was: RPanther2 - RAqua - Exquisite.
This screenshot has a little more "Tigerish" look and feel, I think.