Raw Newcomer

[Pastor Mac]

Hi folks--

Well, I'm jumping into the deep end and tried the 4.9 release.  I 
finally got the system stable after the 3rd try.  I started out on a 
unstable WinXP box and wiped the drive and reloaded XP Pro on the first 
15 GB of the 40 GB drive.  I had a second 8 GB drive that I wanted to 
put FreeBSD on and so I was using the mini install disc and a FTP 
connection to the main site.  But apparently I ended up either slicing 
the wrong drive or putting the bootloader elsewhere.  Upon the 
post-install reboot, I had nothing.  I was sure I did things right but 
obviously not.  Back to the install docs.

The 2nd time I just tried using the mini-install CD but I didn't get 
enough pkgs for some selections I made and so several pkgs were missing 
components, namely a graphical environment.  OK, I'm a Mac freak 
(albeit on OS X) and navigating a command line is not easy so I need 
the training wheels right now...

So I decided to wipe the slice again and create a 10 GB slice on the 
main drive and another FTP install (Comcast cable service is now giving 
a 3 Mbps connection to users) and see if I can put the bootloader in 
the right place.  I chose the "Graphical User" option for packages--I'm 
not a coder or developer, I just want to be a desktop user and play 
with the server tools because I'd like to get into network 
administration and from the conversation I pick up here and there is 
that *BSD has the maturity that Linux yet needs.  Plus Max OS X has the 
BSD network layer and Avie Tevanian seems to have pretty good judgement 
on such matters.

Anyway, I have the Handbook and I'm trying to digest what I can--I had 
a class last year using Red Hat 7.2 for network administration so I'm 
acquainted with basic terminology and some of the standard server 
packages (BIND, Sendmail, Apache, etc).   I'm going to read and pop up 
in the Questions list and try real, real hard not to sound like the 
marketing doofus from User Friendly.

Pax,

Mike McDonald (Pastor Mac)
On OS X, learning FreeBSD


Pax,

Pastor Mac
On OS X