When installing LXDE on FreeBSD-HEAD (at least, until imake is eliminated from the ports tree, if that ever happens) the following addition to the make.conf will help immensely in preventing stress and hair tearing.

# clang fallout: lxde has ports using imake, imake does not like clang
.if !empty(.CURDIR:M/usr/ports/*) && exists(/usr/local/bin/gcc46)
.if ${.CURDIR:M*/textproc/docbook-to-man} || ${.CURDIR:M*/x11/lxpanel}
CC=gcc46
CXX=g++46
CPP=cpp46
.endif
.endif

Note this only works if you have installed gcc 4.6, otherwise modify as necessary.

When performing zfs per­am­bu­la­tions after install (as noted in ZFS and NAStie and i386 and not reading the spec­i­fi­ca­tion), the chance of finger fumbling errors is high. To prevent those errors, I modified the zfsinstall script included in the mfsBSD 8.2-RELEASE-p2 ISO to configure the paths to different dataset objects as described on the FreeBSD Wiki.

A patch is available for future use/reference, and the contents of the patch are displayed below.

Ahem.

Apparently one should not skim the docs when putting together a server. Apparently one should actually read the portion which tells you what type of processor you have (for example, if you have a 64-bit processor). Oc­ca­sion­al­ly that type of in­for­ma­tion would be useful... like... say... when you are trying to get your FreeBSD in­stal­la­tion using ZFS to be stable, which it is NOT on 32-bit (ok, some small portion of the population has aligned the stars, but I did not)! …continue.

When installing CYGWIN in the future, remember to visit this page. It tells you how to use bash.exe --login -i instead of the batch file.

A tiny reminder to (when playing with Thun­der­bird) do the following in the config editor.

mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new = true
mailnews.default_sort_order = 22
mailnews.default_sort_type = 1
mailnews.default_view_flags = 1
mailnews.headers.showSender = true
mailnews.headers.showUserAgent = true

Sigh... much better.

Oh, yeah, found at http://www.everything-mdaemon.com/general/threading-messages-in-thun­der­bird.

In Debian on Macbook Pro 5.2 I mentioned using the xterm*font resource to get rid of the nasty fonts, and then could not find the TTF fonts in xfontsel/xlsfonts (despite using my previous post about xorg font hell), and began to get very frustrated.

Apparently, the frus­tra­tion was not necessary. Apparently, while I have spent my time in OS X land, the Linux universe was moving further and further from having X provide the fonts, instead using fontconfig and other tools. Also xterm has a method to access ttf fonts separate from the normal X fonts.

The following (in com­bi­na­tion with a recent article on the …continue.

So, Mac OS X got on my last nerve and led me back to the holy land (linux, what else?). While FreeBSD beckoned there are certain pieces of software I must have working for this Quarter. It is the first of my Master Degree classes, so I want to get in the proper habits (such as not staying up all night getting Math­e­mat­i­ca or MATLAB working in FreeBSD, when Linux versions are available ;)).

Regardless, some notes about stumbling blocks would be helpful if I need to do this again, so here goes.

WIFI - The wireless is a Broadcom Cor­po­ra­tion BCM4322.

$ lspci -s 04:00.0
04:00.0 Network 

According to various sources, stability of ZFS on i386 boxes is going to be... not a priority. Regardless, I decided to take up the challenge.

My first attempt to get everything stable was to use zero settings in the loader.conf file. That lasted until my first big ports build. That did not work.

A similar (but not the actual: I have received plenty and just chose the last one) error message follows.

panic: kmem_malloc(86016): kmem_map too small: 520044544 total allocated
cpuid = 0
KDB: enter: panic
[ thread pid 0 tid 100228 ]
Stopped at      kdb_enter+0x3a: movl    $0, kdb_why

This is consistent …continue.

It is always exciting (and scary!) when a new system arrives, and arrive it did: A brand spanking seller-re­fur­bished Dell Optiplex GX620 with 512 MB of RAM and a 40 GB hard drive. Wooo!

Ahem.

Anyway, the first task was to confirm it worked, which I did and it did. The second task was to move NAStie (of building NAStie) over to the new system.

Sur­pris­ing­ly (with a few burps because of SATA connected to the wrong port and other fumbles) everything worked right away. I just made sure to zpool export and zpool import as rec­om­mend­ed on a forum post about similar hijinks and the …continue.

While my priorities have not changed a "shiny" moment had me read all about ZFS and how it will change the world, save all the children, and eliminate hunger for all time.

With ad­ver­tise­ments like those, how could I resist trying to run it on a Compaq SR1103WM with a lofty 768MB of RAM? Luckily, I found a post which provided almost everything needed to do a ZFS-mostly install. As it had only been three days since the server rebuild, and everything I did to setup the server aspects (vs. the actual install and fi­lessys­tem aspects) was still in my head, I figured it was now or …continue.