Re: Troubleshooting FreeBSD

From: Dave Cottlehuber <dch_at_skunkwerks.at>
Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2022 08:39:57 UTC
On Fri, 4 Nov 2022, at 23:37, Joe B wrote:
> Thanks for the reply,
>
> I will start doing that. I noticed YouTubers always use virtual 
> machines, I need to take note.
>
> Reinstalled last night and I'm up and running. I learn quickly so I 
> will keep reading the handbook and related websites of FreeBSD to keep 
> me up and running
>
> Thanks again
>
> *Joe B* - Chat @ Spike 

Welcome Joe.

discord & IRC channels are pretty active normally 24x7, you may need to
lurk a wee bit sometimes before you get answers, though. Big advantage
is you can get to both of these via phone/tablet e.g.
https://www.irccloud.com/irc/libera/channel/freebsd

If you only have 1 system to play with, you can try out:

- jails
- zfs boot environments
- bhyve

Jails make playing with software and ports trivial, as do VMs as you
know. zfs boot environments are probably my favourite FreeBSD feature,
allowing you to easily roll back from almost any disaster, self-induced
or not.

Some useful background:

- https://man.freebsd.org/<something> is a handy shortcut for manpages
- https://klarasystems.com/articles/the-freebsd-boot-process
- https://klarasystems.com/articles/managing-boot-environments
- https://callfortesting.org/bhyve-boot-environments
- https://people.freebsd.org/~dch/posts/2021-02-23-sideloading-freebsd.html
- https://mfsbsd.vx.sk/ is a very handy tool when you fsck up your
  device to not-booting stage, its a purely memory-based FreeBSD with network
  support

I recommend vm-bhyve and mkjail as good starting tools for bhyve and jails
respectively.

A+
Dave