Emerald Themes in FBSD

Actually, even without fusion-icon, the Emerald themes for FreeBSD 6.3 can be changed quite easily by calling up K-Menu>Settings>Emerald Theme Manager.
In the settings box too is CCSM.
Nevertheless, I had posted on the compiz forums to see if I could get fusion-icon for FBSD. I got a very thorough reply which didn't quite work but I think taht I'll be able to get it to work. Let's see.

FreeBSD running well now.

After I got KDE installed, everything else went smoothly.
I then tried to install compiz-fusion from here and that, too, went smoothly.
However, some additional things I had to do were:

1. Write "emerald --replace" in the command line on the Window DSeocrator plugin in ccsm
2. Write a small script and place in |/.kde/Autostart to get compiz-fusion to start at boot.
3. No fusion-icon so don't know how to change emerald themes.

I've seen that AWN may be run on FreeBSD wih a patch but this hasn't worked for me yet.

Re-installation and configuration of FreeBSD 6.3

I had tried to install Compiz-Fusion on FBSD but had to stop it half way (intending to run it over night).
Therafter, FBSD would only boot to the TTY login and "kdm start" did nothing (although startx worked). So, it looks like my KDE got messed up.
Rather than trying to resurrect something that was perhaps beyond salvation, I decided to re-install FBSD.
Although I chose "All" of the so-called canned packages, I couldn't get kde to start (couldn't remember if I had to install it separtely last time).
Anyway, this time, I did install KDE, but only after first upgrading the ports tree with Portsnap.
Then after upgrading the ports, I went ahead and installed KDE using this guide.

Now running FreeBSD 6.3 from HDD

Well, I installed FBSD 6.3 on a 12GB primary partition on the Dell internal HDD and the install went without problems.
Then I only needed to change the FBSD entry in the Ubuntu partition (where the mbr is) for FBSD to

title FreeBSD 6.3
root (hdo,3,a)
kernel /boot/freebsd/loader

where (hd0,3) is the primary partition on the internal HDD where FBSD is stored and a is its root directory.
Thereafter FBSD booted without problems.
Still can't say I understand why I couldn't get FBSD to boot from the usb HDD, though. When I understand a bit more about what's going on here I might try th usb HDD again.

Note that on the int HDD version, I used KDE in FBSD whereas on the VM version I employed Gnome.

To get KDM to start at boot without having to go through a rigmarole of logging in and then starting KDM manually, is different from the situation with Gnome. I posted about this to BSD forums and got this reply which solved the problem.
However, befire getting to this stage, it is necessary to install xorg (pkg_add -r xorg)

Attempts to run FreeBSD 6.3 from HDD (rather than as VM)

Some problems in installing FreeBSD from CD to Philips usb HDD. Seems that FreeBSD only recognises Primary partitions and NOT logical partitions.
So, as my first targetted partition was logical, I had to repartition this drive to get a suitable primary partition.
Thereafter the install went fairly smoothly.
I can't remember whether I tried the Boot Manager or the Standard MBR install (probably standard MBR).
Then I tried to boot to this (as follows):

First I tried to get FreeBSD to boot from the Philips HDD. For this I added to the Ubuntu /boot/grub/menu.lst the following:

title FreeBSD 6.3
root (hdo,5)
kernel /boot/freebsd/loader root=da0a

I then copied the file from FreeBSD (VM) /boot/loader to (Ubuntu) /boot/freebsd/ where the freebsd folder was new.
This actually got the FBSD loader working (know from format of boot messages) but then it stopped saying "cannot load kernel"
So then I saw that the FBSD /boot folder had a "kernel"
So I decided to install ALL of the FBSD /boot directory in the Ubuntu /boot/freebsd.
I did this by tarring and compressing which gave me one file in a compressed form (24 MB went to 10 MB, which meant it could now be easily emailed)
This is a very useful technique and I'm going to write a short howto in the next post so it'll be easier for me to find in months/years to come.
However, even having set up the Ubuntu /boot/freebsd directory EXACTLY as the FBSD /boot folder, I still get the "cannot load kernel" error.
At this stage it looked like I needed to put FreeBSD onto my internal HDD on the Dell, if I was to have any chance of including it in my multiboot menu.

So, repartitioned the 80GB internal HDD leaving a 12 GB partition for FreeBSD.
Installed FBSD, first with Boot Manager option and secondly with Standard MBR.
In both cases, this messed up the Ubuntu MBR I had on this HDD. I had a problem restoring Grub the first time and had to re-install Ubuntu (leaving the /home unformatted).
The second time, however, I found that to do the Grub restore, you MUST type "sudo grub", not just grub. The latter on its own will give misleading results.
I'm going to write another small Howto about this as it too will be useful in furture.
In any event, once the Grub MBR was restored, everything worked fine nd I could get FBSD to boot.
Unfortunately, I still haven't got a WM working as I had a problem when i was trying to install KDE. This is that he top CDROM on the Dell just wouldn't open when I tried to change disks (as instructed by the installer).
However, it seems to be fine now and I'm installing KDE through ports which is probably better as I don't have to go through all that disk-changing crap.

Trying to install FreeBSD 6.3 on Philips 160 GB usb HDD

Afetr partitioning this drive and leaving a 15GB logical partition for FreeBSD, I had a go at installing it today.
However, when I got to the partitioning part of the install, I noticed that FreeBSD did not seem to recognise the logical partitions on the drive.
So, it saw the primary 3GB ext3 partition, the 2.5GB swpa partition (also primary) and the extended partition (147GB) but nothing else.
The only other time I've installed FreeBSD was to a virtual disk (VMware Server) whre it didn't seem to have any problem in recognising this disk (which of course was completely unpartitioned).
Anyway, this was a bit of a setback to my attempts to install FreeBSD.
So, I then set about re-arranging the partitions on the drive to give a 15GB primary partition for FreeBSD.
I'll try the install again tomorrow.

Continuing FreeBSD setup.

Ran into various problems with freeBSD today.
1) When I open Gmail in Opera 9.25 it asks me to install the flashplayer. However, only flashplayer 9 is offered and I know that this doesn't work on Opera 9.25. So, I decided to download the snapshot. However, when I eventually got this to install (.tar.bz2), it just wouldn't open saying there was som missing thing (lib.xx.so where xx is something I can't remember).
Then 9.25 wouldn't re-install on top of this so I had to do a

pkg_delete opera\*

which deletes ALL opera stuff. However, this didn't seem to go that smoothly as it complained about not being ble to delete certain files. Nevertheless, it enabled me to re-install opera 9.25 and this worked fine (other than having no flash player).

2) Installed Yakuake using

pkg_add -r yakuake

and this took off very promisingly.
However, it literally went on for nearly eight (8) hours and added at least 1GB of stuff to /usr. Seems like it went ahead and put in an awful lot of KDE stuff along with Yakuake.
In any event, ykuake works fine.

3) Installing VMware Tools in VM FreeBSD
I tried various means to get this installed including this and this and this.
Nothing seemed to go smoothly although some were better than others.
The one that worked best was a variant on the thoughtpolice one where I basically just changed a lot of permissions to get a freebsd.iso file which I then opened to get vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz.
I then extracted this and one of the resulting files was freebsd.iso (a lot of permission changing to get this).
I then opened this to get vmware-tools-distrib which contains an installer.
When I started up after this, GDM wouldn't start and seemed to say something about the xorg.conf file. Luckily VMware had preserved the old copy of xorg.conf before it was changed. So substituing the old xorg I was able to get X to start again.
However, no vmware-tools logo visible in tray.
Nevertheless, when it shuts down it mentions that vmware-tools are being shutdown. And I saw somewhere else that it may be that vmware-tools are not configured.

Put FreeBSD on usb HDD?

Because of the success I've had today with this OS (after all this time) and because it looks very good and, particularly, it seems to be extremely well documented, I though perhaps to take it out of the VM environment and put it on the Philips usb HDD. Then I'd see if I could boot it with grub fom the Dell.
This article here explains how Grub can be made to boot FreeBSD so this very much looks a possibility.

FreeBSD progress

A lot of progress on FreeBSD today (as VM under Ubuntu) as I managed to get it up and running with Gnome/Internet.
Looking very good and glad to be finally learning about this renowned OS.
Unfortunatly, had a problem at the end of the day which I can't explain. This is that the keyboard appears to stop properly functioning. Indeed, of all the keys, only n, j and e print normally. The majority don't print anything at all.
Strangely, when I need to login to the gnome screen, I have no problem typing my name and password. It seems to be that after this, the keyboard goes crazy.
Funny thing is that it was OK earlier on
Also, keyboard works fine in Haiku on same VMware Server.
Seems like there's a configuration problem.

*************
Solved
*************
Actually, I've just solved this by going to System>Preferences>Keyboard>Layouts.
Here only UK was present and, I think, not highlighted. So, I clicked in the radio button and I got my keyboard back.

Edit (25/02/08)
In fact, the fix described above was only temporary. he loss of keyboard functionality is a frequent occurrence in FreeBSD VM and in general it can only be revived by rebooting.

One strange thing happened today in that I couldn't go to FullScreen in VMware Server with FreeBSD. When I tried I go an error message saying

Unable to find an appropriate host video mode
Adding the guest mode to the "display" subsection of the "screen" section of your
/etc/X11/XF86Config and restarting X is likely to help

In fact, this was due to the fact that I had missed out on the last step of the X-server install/config procedure.
I got this from here and in summary it's:
1. Install xorg
2. configure xorg
3. copy xorg.conf.new from /root to /etc/X11/xorg.conf
When I carried out this last step, I was able to get FullScreen without problems.

Another importan item is how to be able to use "su" command. This is explained here.
A more abbreviated expalnation of FreeBSD installationa and initial configuration are available here and here.

FreeBSD progress

As with most things, if you keep at them, despite a feeling of desperation, dejection and pointlessness, you will actually see improvements.
So it is with my attempts to get a VM of FreeBSD 6.3 working on my Dell desktop.
Two relevant points here are:
1) To get FreeBSD VM to start (or boot) you MUST install the standard MBR during the creation of the VM. I had chosen "none" for the first few times simply because of problems I've had in the past with a new bootloader going in and destroying my multiboot system which relies on the MBR/bootloader being in a certain place.
Of course, this fear was totally unfounded as he VM creation looks ONLY at a virtual disk and nowhere else.
So, once I had installed the standard MBR, it booted up fine.
However, because of the major problems I was having with package installation, I did none at all this time. However, the VM turned out to be purely text-based. Typing "startx" did nothing other than give an error message.
So, I tried again and installed nearly ALL the X11 stuff.
Booted up again and this time "startx" did give a GUI -- although it has to be said a rather simple one. But I haven't gotten around to starting up any window manager yet so this may improve.
In any event, I've now broken through that initial barrier and it's time for me to start learing how to use FreeBSD. I'm going to use this guide.

FreeBSD

I had been promising for about 18 months to have a look at FreeBSD but have never really got around to it.
I did recently install a text-based version of FreeBSD as a VM in VMware Server but this was very uninspiring and even boring.
So, the only way I was ever going to get into FreeBSD was to get a GUI version.
Then I downloaded the three CDs of FreeBSD 6.3. Amazingly there is no DVD iso available although I've seen some posts showing how any number of CD isos can be combined to make one DVD iso. However, I didn't try these.
So, then I started creating my VM. I have to say, however, that this is a real PITA because I have to keep changing the disks every minute or wo during the package installation part of the process.
I'm not sure how much longer I will have to do this bu the install has been going on for more than two hoursup to now.

Some more VMs

I'll just quickly mention here that I installed two further VMs in my ~/virtual_machines folder today on the Dell.
1) Syllable (from here)
Seems to work OK in VMware Server and have Internet. The .vmdk size is about 350MB
2) FreeBSD 6.3 from here
Seems that this is a purely GUI-free version so I haven't really looked at it at all. But it's there.