grahamperrin

Using pkgbasify to repair a broken installation of FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE

Condensed steps

1. Use a memstick.img file to write a FreeBSD installer to a memory stick
2. boot in single user mode
3. use gpart(8) to resize things
4. exit
5. shell
6. growfs /

grahamperrin

FreeBSD: preferring ee (avoiding vi) for csh/tcsh and sh

Before exiting the installer

/etc/csh.cshrc

setenv EDITOR ee

/etc/profile

grahamperrin

Package availability

FreshPorts provides tables, and more.

Desktop environments, display managers, Sway, X.Org

It's not unusual for a Tier 1 platform to have no package for a wanted desktop environment. Two platforms are at this tier:

• aarch64 – 64-bit ARMv8

grahamperrin

root@mowa219-gjp4-zbook-freebsd:~ # bectl list -c creation | tail -n 6
1500043-002-base         -      -          1.71G 2025-05-16 12:34
1500043-003-base         -      -          1.74G 2025-05-20 11:00
1500043-004-base         -      -          1.66G 2025-05-21 05:50
1500043-005-base         R      /tmp/down  240G  2025-05-23 18:45
1500043-007-base-firefox N      /          8.88G 2025-05-25 06:08
1500043-008-base         -      -          1.18G 2025-05-25 06:43
root@mowa219-gjp4-zbook-freebsd:~ # bectl umount 1500043-005-base
root@mowa219-gjp4-zbook-freebsd:~ # pkg iinfo gobject
gobject-introspection-1.84.0,1

grahamperrin

A concise comparison of operating systems. Some focus on root-on-ZFS, and on Plasma. Not intended to be comprehensive.

Describing availability is not necessarily a recommendation to install what's available.

The systems

• FreeBSD
• GhostBSD

grahamperrin

Seeking the best unofficial resources

I fed a forty-word paragraph to Google Gemini 2.5 Pro (Experimental) on the evening of Sunday 20th April. Twenty of the forty:

Where can I find general troubleshooting advice for FreeBSD? Emphasis on: general. … I'm looking for the best unofficial resources. Thanks.

Gemini offered a 508-word response. I:

1. reduced it to around 330 (not counting * or … as words)
2. added a link to the third edition (2018) of Absolute FreeBSD

grahamperrin

Script started on Sun Apr 13 01:59:44 2025
You have mail.
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # echo $SHELL

/bin/csh
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # date ; uptime

Sun Apr 13 01:59:52 BST 2025
 1:59AM  up 3 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.14, 0.24, 0.12
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # ghostbsd-version

grahamperrin

Script started on Sat Apr 12 20:16:09 2025
You have mail.
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # echo $SHELL
/bin/csh
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # date ; uptime
Sat Apr 12 20:16:19 BST 2025
 8:16PM  up 14 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.34, 0.15, 0.08
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # ghostbsd-version
24.10.1
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # freebsd-version -kru

grahamperrin

Script started on Sun Apr 13 12:15:30 2025
You have mail.
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # echo $SHELL
/bin/csh
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # date ; uptime
Sun Apr 13 12:15:40 BST 2025
12:15PM  up 2 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.24, 0.16, 0.07
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # ghostbsd-version
25.01-R14.2p2
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # freebsd-version -kru

grahamperrin

Script started on Sun Apr 13 08:18:53 2025
You have mail.
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # echo $SHELL

/bin/csh
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # date ; uptime

Sun Apr 13 08:19:04 BST 2025
 8:19AM  up 8 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.13, 0.08, 0.02
root@mowa219-gjp4-ghostbsd-14-vm:~ # pkg -v