Setting up FreeBSD workstation - sergeylukin/dotfiles GitHub Wiki

Installation

System

  • Prepare the Installation Media (CD or USB memory stick)
  • Boot from Installation Media and choose to Install the OS
  • Uncheck all optional system components when prompted
  • Choose manual partitioning and make sure to have following structure (assuming that size of free space is 16Gb):
    • Type: "freebsd", Size: "16Gb", Mountpoint: "", Primary partition
      • Type: "freebsd-ufs", Size: "14Gb", Mountpoint: "/", Logical partition
      • Type: "freebsd-swap", Size: "2Gb", Mountpoint: "", Logical partition
  • Check sshd in system configuration menu
  • Add user with defaults plus add them to group "wheel"

MBR and FreeBSD Boot Manager

  • Choose to stay in the shell or boot from Installation Media's and enter it's shell
  • Run sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 to be able changing the boot partition (not required if booted from Installation Media)
  • Launch sysinstall, enter Configure section, launch Fdisk utility, set FreeBSD Primary partition as Active by pressing s keyword when it is selected, exit and choose FreeBSD Boot Manager to be installed in MBR
  • Reboot and check that FreeBSD Boot Manager provides menu with all existing Operating Systems.
  • In order to customize FreeBSD Boot Manager and remove some unwanted menu items refer to boot0cfg tool.

Here is a small tip on removing menu items. Assuming you have this menu:

  • F1 FreeBSD
  • F2 Windows
  • F3 ?

and you would like to remove the third one (looks like it's a FAT32 partition without any OS for file sharing between FreeBSD and Windows) you would run (replace /dev/ada0 with your drive):

boot0cfg -m 0x3 /dev/ada0

0x3 is a hexadecimal of decimal 3, while 3 is a sum of integers that represent each active item. Each item's integer is previous item's integer multiplied by 2, so:

  • F1 = 1
  • F2 = 2
  • F3 = 4
  • etc.

Post-installation

Patch and update system

  • Log in with root user
  • Run freebsd-update fetch install - to install the latest OS patches
  • Run portsnap fetch extract - to download and extract the ports tree (should be done only once)
  • Run portsnap fetch update - to update the ports tree (repeat this step frequently)

Build Kernel

  • cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf
  • mkdir /root/kernels
  • cp GENERIC /root/kernels/WORKSTATION or use this template (check compatibility first)
  • ln -s /root/kernels/WORKSTATION
  • edit /root/kernels/WORKSTATION accordingly
  • cd /usr/src
  • make buildkernel KERNCONF=WORKSTATION
  • make installkernel KERNCONF=WORKSTATION

System settings

  • In order to clean /tmp contents on boot, add following to /etc/rc.conf:
clear_tmp_enable="YES"
  • Change boot menu ASCII logo touch /boot/loader.conf and add (see /boot/beastie.4th for available values):
loader_logo="beastie"
  • Change welcome message for every user login in /etc/motd, for example:
cd /usr/ports/misc/figlet && make install distclean
figlet w00t
           ___   ___  _
__      __/ _ \ / _ \| |_
\ \ /\ / / | | | | | | __|
 \ V  V /| |_| | |_| | |_
  \_/\_/  \___/ \___/ \__|

UTF-8

  • Check current locale by running locale
  • To enable UTF-8 for specific user add 2 lines to me block in ~/.login_conf, like so (replace en_US with any available locale that is listed in locale -a | grep UTF-8):
me:\
   ...
   :charset=UTF-8:\
   :lang=en_US.UTF-8:
  • To enable UTF-8 globally, add same 2 lines to default block in /etc/login.conf and run cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf
  • Exit all active sessions and after login verify that new settings were applied by running locale

Set mounts

Assuming you have, for example FAT32 partition to share files between Windows and FreeBSD

  • Create /mnt/shared where we will mount our partition
  • Run fdisk and find desired partition number (let's say it's 3)
  • Edit /etc/fstab and add following line:
/dev/ada0s3     /mnt/shared     msdosfs rw      0       0
  • After reboot you should be able to Read/Write to the contents of /mnt/shared and access it from other OS on same machine

SSH Logging

  • Create file for logs touch /var/log/sshd.log
  • Add following to /etc/syslog.conf:
!sshd
*.*                                             /var/log/sshd.log
  • Make sure to have these lines in /etc/ssh/sshd_config (adjust LogLevel accordingly):
SyslogFacility AUTH
LogLevel DEBUG3

Install Multi-User Dev Tools

  • IDE cd /usr/ports/editors/vim && make install clean
  • Version Control System cd /usr/ports/devel/git && make install clean
  • Shell cd /usr/ports/shells/zsh && make install clean
  • Terminal Multiplexer cd /usr/ports/sysutils/tmux && make install clean
  • Headless Webkit cd /usr/ports/lang/phantomjs && make install clean
  • NodeJS cd /usr/ports/www/node && make install clean
  • Npm cd /usr/ports/www/npm && make install clean
  • libyaml cd /usr/ports/textproc/libyaml && make install clean - required for ruby
  • optipng cd /usr/ports/graphics/optipng && make install clean
  • Make sure you have jpegtran installed as well
  • Yeoman npm install -g yeoman - install this one after single-user installations are finished
  • Google Chrome cd /usr/ports/www/chromium && make install clean - this will take some time, but it worth it

Install Single-User Dev Tools

  • Install RVM \curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable, source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm
  • Make sure you have following in your shell's RC file (.bashrc, .zshrc or any other):
[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ](/sergeylukin/dotfiles/wiki/--s-"$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"-) && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # This loads RVM into a shell session.
  • Install Ruby rvm install 1.9.3
  • Compass gem install compass
  • Ruby On Rails gem install rails

Misc utilities & stuff (install according to need)

  • Download nice system dump script to ~/bin or install bsdinfo cd /usr/ports/sysutils/bsdinfo && make install clean
  • htop (system monitor) cd /usr/ports/sysutils/htop && make install clean
  • iftop (network monitor) cd /usr/ports/net-mgmt/iftop && make install clean
  • mpg321 (Audio playback) cd /usr/ports/audio/mpg321 && make install clean
  • cplay (Music CLI manager) cd /usr/ports/audio/cplay && make install clean
  • eyeD3 (read & edit MP3 ID3 tags) easy_install eyeD3 Requires Python
  • Gnupg (Encryption & Signing) cd /usr/ports/security/gnupg && make install clean (mark Pinentry checkbox)
  • tree (list dirs contents as a tree) cd /usr/ports/sysutils/tree && make install clean
  • wget (downloader) cd /usr/ports/ftp/wget && make install clean
  • sudo (privileges tool) cd /usr/ports/security/sudo && make install clean
  • Install CLI dotfiles bundle

GUI

X Window System

  • Install Xorg cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg && make install clean (X11 FreeBSD implementation)
  • Add following lines to your /etc/rc.conf:
# Xorg
hald_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"
  • Build initial configuration file Xorg -configure
  • Modify /root/xorg.conf.new or use this template (check compatibility)
  • Test Xorg -config xorg.conf.new -retro
  • Deploy mv xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
  • You can change Console's Video Mode. To see all available video modes run vidcontrol -i mode. Assuming you picked mode 280, test it with vidcontrol MODE_280 and if it works fine add following to /etc/rc.conf:
# Console Video Mode
allscreens_flags="MODE_280"

Desktop Environment

  • Install Xfce cd /usr/ports/x11-wm/xfce4 && make install clean
  • Set Xfce by default echo "/usr/local/bin/startxfce4" > ~/.xinitrc for current user only or echo "/usr/local/bin/startxfce4" > /usr/local/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc for all users (run find / -name xinitrc to find correct path for global xinitrc file)

Themes & Icons

  • Download themes into ~/.themes and select them in Settings -> Window Manager and Settings -> Appearance (highly recommend theme called Victory (Strikes Again))
  • Download icons into ~/.icons and select them in Settings -> Appearance -> Icons (highly recommend this icons pack)

OR

Install Utilities

  • Opera (Web browser) download latest version from opera.com, unpack and run ./install script
  • xClip (Xorg Buffer) cd /usr/ports/x11/xclip && make install clean
  • feh (image viewer) cd /usr/ports/graphics/feh && make install clean
  • MPlayer (Video playback) cd /usr/ports/multimedia/mplayer && make install clean
  • ffmpg (Video converter) cd /usr/ports/multimedia/ffmpeg && make install clean