Installing FreeBSD ver. 8.2

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:45:37 -0800 (PST), leeoliveshackelford at surewest.net wrote:
> Good evening, dear FreeBSD enthusiast.  I am a newcomer,
> and have installed FreeBSD 8.2 on a Hewlett-Packard xw4400. 

Excellent choice of OS.



> After many hours of frustration, I am tearing my hair out. 
> I want my system to include an M-Audio Delta 1010LT sound
> card, MIDI over USB driver, X-windows, and Gnome. 

The M-Audio Delta sound hardware is listed in the snd_envy24
sound driver. MIDI over USB... sorry, no experience with that
(only "real" MIDI in ye olden times). X-Window (X11) and
Gnome need to be installed, they are not part of the operating
system.



> The instructions in the handbook and on-disk man do not
> seem to apply to this version of FreeBSD, or at least I
> do not seem to know how to apply them. 

The basic steps should be the same. They have been nearly
the same since 4.0. :-)



> I type "find sound," or "find pcm," or find snd_envy24,"
> or "find x11," or "find gnome," and receive either a
> blank response, or response of "file does not exist" to
> all of these queries. 

That's correct. See "man find" for how to properly invoke
that program. Basically, you use

	# find <start-dir> -name <what>

to find some specific files, e. g.

	# find /usr/ports -name gnome
	# find /boot -name snd_envy24\*

You can add the \* wildcard (* needs to be escaped for the
shell to _not_ expand it!) if you're not searching for one
specific file name.



> All of these items were supposedly installed at the time
> of system configuration, but as to where, I cannot seem
> to determine. 

Installed software will be in /usr/local. You can for example
use the command

	# find /usr/local -name gnome-session\*

to see if the gnome session manager has been installed.

An easier approach is to make yourself familiar with ports
and packages, and how to use the pkg_* family of tools, as
well as how to read the content of /var/db/pkg; for example,
all installed software will cause a directory to be created
in that path, so you can see if it's there:

	# ls /var/db/pkg/gnome*

will list all gnome stuff that is installed. This subtree is
your "catalog of installed things". But it's _much_ easier
to read "man pkg_info" and use that.

It's not the time for a lecture about shell scripting
right now. :-)

Just in case you don't know the correct syntax for any
command, or the purpose or layout of a file, use its
man page. FreeBSD is known for covering all the parts
of the OS with a proper manual page (system binaries
and scripts, configuration files, device drivers,
kernel interfaces, library functions, system operation
and maintenance procedures, and introductions).



> The gnome installation took twice as long as installation
> of everything else.  Where did sysinstall install it? 

Into /usr/local. Gnome is a "heavy beast" with lots of
dependencies.



> How do I get it to start? 

This is covered in the Handbook in section 6.7:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11-wm.html

make sure you're running the depending services related
to making Gnome functional. Additionally, in most cases
you'll want to have

	hald_enable="YES"
	dbus_enable="YES"

in /etc/rc.conf, the system's configuration file.

Also see http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/



> The response to "startx" is "file does not exit."  I realize
> that I may be missing something o
>  b!
> vious. 

It seems that you're missing X. :-)

You need to install the xorg port (or package via pkg_add -r)
along with the driver for your graphics card. If you have
successfully accomplished that, Gnome should be up and
running.





-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...