NetApp requires setting a timeout value of 190 seconds for all VMware data stores on their filers to handle “long fabric or storage-side I/O interruptions”; this is done as follows on FreeBSD: This can be set permanently in /etc/sysctl.conf: Elsewhere, I have seen a recommendation for FreeBSD on ESX that kern.cam.da.retry_count be set to 120.
The Exim port on FreeBSD does not have a menu-driven configuration system accessible by running make config, although it does have a plethora of options described in /usr/ports/mail/exim/options. If using portupgrade, you can pass these options with the -m flag; for example: # portupgrade -m “WITH_CONTENT_SCAN=yes WITH_SASLAUTHD=yes WITH_DOMAINKEYS=yes” exim
To test the ruleset in /etc/pf.conf, do the following: sudo pfctl -n -f /etc/pf.conf sudo pfctl -n -v -f /etc/pf.conf The second pfctl command displays the rules you’ve created; however, it can be easy to miss a syntax error warning in the verbosity – the first command will make it easy to spot those. You can [...]
When upgrading via a patch, installing the patch can be done by adding a “DESTDIR” argument to make:# make install DESTDIR=/u1/jail/192.168.0.12 When upgrading from source (Adapted from Upgrading a Jail from Source):# setenv JAIL /u1/jail/192.168.0.12 # mergemaster -pd -D $JAIL # cd /usr/src && make installworld DESTDIR=$JAIL # mergemaster -svd -D $JAIL
In FreeBSD’s /etc/default/rc.conf, the location of the rc.conf system configuration files is defined in the variable rc_conf_files. If you’re modularizing your rc.conf files – say, for use with Cfengine – you may be tempted to change the value of rc_conf_files in /etc/rc.conf or/etc/rc.conf.local. However, this change will not be picked up by itself – you need to call source_rc_confs after changing rc_conf_files, similar to this: rc_conf_files=”/etc/rc.conf /etc/rc.conf.local /etc/rc.conf.amd” [...]
When attempting to upgrade a port on FreeBSD, you may run into a problem like this: > sudo portupgrade -rR php5 —> Upgrading ‘php5-5.1.6′ to ‘php5-5.1.6_1′ (lang/php5) —> Building ‘/usr/ports/lang/php5′ ===> Cleaning for autoconf-2.59_2 ===> Cleaning for pkg-config-0.21 ===> Cleaning for libxml2-2.6.26 ===> Cleaning for perl-5.8.8 ===> Cleaning for m4-1.4.4 ===> Cleaning for help2man-1.36.4_1 ===> [...]
When upgrading FreeBSD ports, you will lose any customizations that you’ve made to files within the port; this is especially problematic with configuration files. A quick and easy way to check for modifications you may have made is to use the -g flag to pkg_info. For example: > pkg_info -g -x drupal Information for drupal-4.6.9: Mismatched Checksums: /usr/local/www/drupal/.htaccess [...]
Set the following in /etc/make.conf: WRKDIRPREFIX=/home/anl/ports-build DISTDIR=/home/anl/ports-dist WRKDIRPREFIX is a directory that the unprivileged user as able to write to; DISTDIR is the directory their downloads of source files are written to. If the port you are building requires another port to be installed for it to be built, you will be prompted for the root password, so this [...]
EnderUNIX has a large glossary of user-contributed sysctl definitions.
(N.B. – This document was originally written in 2006; I have not verified that it remains applicable to FreeBSD in 2008.) Running a chrooted BIND server within a FreeBSD jail requires mounting its devfs outside of the jail; this document provides an RCng start stop script to do that. Attempting to start BIND using the [...]