Tips and information on setting up your FreeBSD UNIX system.

  1. *BSD tips.
  2. Watching Youtube videos on FreeBSD.
  3. FreeBSD setup tips.

*BSD tips.

Watching Youtube videos on FreeBSD.

BSD and Linux united.

Follow the steps on this blog and set up the Gnash open source flash plugin and you will be able to watch Youtube videos on your FreeBSD machine.

http://www.riondabsd.net/2007/05/23/flash-on-freebsd-using-gnash/comment-page-1/#comment-62357.

FreeBSD software installation with /usr/ports.

If you have installed the ports collection as part of the FreeBSD installation then you can install software rather easily by going to the folder under /usr/ports, for example /usr/ports/x11-wm/windowmaker and then typing make install as root, then the source tarball will be downloaded and installed and any necessary patches added for the program to compile. pkg_add -r is another way to install software, but ports allows you to customise the software as it is built from source.

Here is an example.

[Tue 11/03/22 23:47 EST][pts/1][i386/freebsd8.0/8.2-RELEASE][4.3.10]
<shoggoth@Gondor:~>
zsh/2 1 % ls -hula /usr/ports/x11-wm/windowmaker 
total 32
drwxr-xr-x    4 root  wheel   512B Mar 22 23:47 .
drwxr-xr-x  188 root  wheel   4.0K Mar 22 23:47 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 root  wheel   3.4K Mar 21 07:08 Makefile
-rw-r--r--    1 root  wheel   215B Mar 21 07:05 distinfo
drwxr-xr-x    2 root  wheel   512B Mar 21 07:05 files
-rw-r--r--    1 root  wheel   433B Mar 21 07:08 pkg-descr
-rw-r--r--    1 root  wheel    13K Mar 21 07:08 pkg-plist
drwxr-xr-x    3 root  wheel   512B Mar 21 07:06 work

FreeBSD setup tips.

Setting up Xorg in FreeBSD 8.1 – 8.2. This below is my /etc/rc.conf I am using on my FreeBSD 8.2 installation on my ASUS A3H laptop. The DBUS and HAL lines are necessary to get a USB mouse and keyboard to work in Xorg.

# -- sysinstall generated deltas -- # Sat Mar 19 23:18:30 2011
# Created: Sat Mar 19 23:18:30 2011
# Enable network daemons for user convenience.
# Please make all changes to this file, not to /etc/defaults/rc.conf.
# This file now contains just the overrides from /etc/defaults/rc.conf.
font8x14="cp437-8x14"
font8x16="cp437-8x16"
font8x8="cp437-8x8"
hostname="Gondor"
inetd_enable="NO"
keymap="us.iso"
saver="logo"
# -- sysinstall generated deltas -- # Sat Mar 19 12:23:21 2011
ifconfig_rl0="DHCP"
hostname="Gondor"
# -- sysinstall generated deltas -- # Sat Mar 19 15:11:42 2011
moused_type="NO"
moused_enable="NO"
# -- sysinstall generated deltas -- # Sat Mar 19 15:17:28 2011
moused_port="/dev/psm0"
moused_type="auto"
moused_enable="YES"
moused_flags="-V"
font8x8="swiss-8x8"
font8x14="NO"
font8x16="swiss-8x16"
powerd_enable="YES"
powerd_flags="-a hiadaptive -b adaptive"
hald_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"
 
wlans_zyd0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"

This is my /boot/loader.conf these entries are necessary to get the SD card slot, sound and WIFI working, although I am using a Belkin USB WIFI dongle rather than the inbuilt Broadcom WIFI.

cpufreq_load="YES"
snd_hda_load="YES"
if_wpi_load="YES"
mmc_load="YES"
mmcsd_load="YES"

Found a good website here: http://www.unixtechnics.org/openbsd-desktop.html with many tips on how to set up your OpenBSD system after installation. Check it out.

Just finished setting up my OpenBSD system and I wanted a better desktop than the FVWM default, so I used su(1) to gain root privileges and typed: pkg_add wmaker and the Windowmaker 0.92 desktop was installed and ready for use. The xmms music player is available and easy to install, with the pkg_add command. You can add mp3 support with the xmms-mp3 package and mplayer(1) is available for playing DVD video discs and xvid movies.

Setting up for music and video playback.

# pkg_add mplayer
 
# pkg_add libdvdcss
 
# pkg_add xmms
 
# pkg_add xmms-mp3

If you can not play DVD discs, then you will have to change the attributes of /dev/rcd0c to look like this. Then you can play a DVD disc as your normal user. Best to install Midnight Commander and change it with that, that is easy.

crw-r--r-- 1 root operator 15, 2 Mar 4 21:57 /dev/rcd0c

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