The Best of BSD 2011

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In this issue you will find the best BSD Magazine articles of 2011. In some articles the content was updated, in others authors wrote the addendum, which is placed below the article. The idea is to sum up the 2011 year, not write a new one, so still you can find the references to old releases. The purpose of this issue is to support BSD Magazine, so it can maintain its position on the market as a free on-line magazine, available for all, who are looking for some knowledge and are eager to tune up their skills or learn some new ones. Check it out!

CONTENTS

FREENAS
By Dru Lavigne

Getting Started with FreeNAS™ 8.2.0
This article provides a big picture overview of the steps that are performed when configuring a FreeNAS™ 8 storage appliance. Subsequent articles will demonstrate specific configuration scenarios.

Using Life Preserver to Backup a PC-BSD 9.0 System to FreeNAS™ 8.2.0
This article demonstrates how to use the built-in Life Preserver program to backup a PC-BSD 9.0 desktop system to a FreeNAS™ 8.2.0 NAS system. Users can refer to the Guides at http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/PC-BSD_9_Handbook and http://doc.freenas.org for instructions on how to install PC-BSD and FreeNAS™.

DRAGONFLYBSD NEWS
By Justin C. Sherrill

Your BSD “App Store” with pbulk: Building Everything in pkgsrc with Automation Using DragonFlyBSD
The “app store” concept seemingly is the latest fad with Apple, Google, Amazon, Valve and so on. Each of them creating individual platforms for moving software to incidental customer gadgets completely through electronic download. Well, as with many other technologies, a pioneer of this software technology trend first showed up as an open source concept.

Testing HAMMER Deduplication on Real-world Data
Prices for various storage devices are generally determined by size, then speed, and then the whole price is increased by the features that come with that disk appliance. The ability to reduce disk usage by recording disk structures once and then just leaving references to that structure any place it is repeated is one of those features. Deduplication is the name, and you can count on it adding an extra zero on the price.

Recovering Data with HAMMER
We’ve all experienced instant regret. That’s the feeling that comes within a second of executing a command like „rm -rf * .txt” (note the space), or of cutting the wrong cluster of wires at the end of a long conduit. Not that I am quoting from experience, or anything like that, no… HAMMER DragonFly’s default file system, can help with that.

CONFIGURATION & AUTHENTICATION WITH OPENBSD
By Ian Darwin, Lars R. Noldan, Antoine Jacoutot, Paul McMath

OpenBSD Improves Upon /etc/rc.d/
The OpenBSD developers did not adopt a change like this until they were sure they had a mechanism that was both simple to implement and simple to use. The init process is the beginning of all userland activity on UNIX and most *nix-like systems. From this article you will how to create your own rc.d scripts if you need to and how to start, stop and control daemons that use it.

Speed Daemons
This article describes how by using advanced networking mechanisms in FreeBSD you can build a high performance, highly available web application server. You will learn also what CARP is and a bit more about installing and configuring ifstated.

Keeping Your Configuration Files Shiny As New Using sysmerge(8)
OpenBSD is not built from a collection of packages. Instead, it is bundled as a coherent whole, providing a complete Operating System extracted from a handful of tarballs. That makes it a very easy system to upgrade. From this article you will learn the sysmerge(8) usage and best practices.

OpenBSD Kernel Memory Pools: Monitoring Usage with Systat
This article explains how to understand memory usage statistics for kernel memory pools as they are displayed by the systat(1) command on OpenBSD.

LDAP Authentication and Authorization of Unix Users Under OpenBSD
Unlike most Unix-like operating systems, OpenBSD does not come with PAM nor nsswitch which made it tedious to authenticate local users against a remote database like LDAP. That was until ypldap(8) came along. This article focuses on the plumbing much more than on the theory.

DESKTOP
By Dru Lavigne, Petr Topiarz, Antoine Jacoutot

Supporting Multiple Desktops in PC-BSD 9.0
Beginning with version 9.0, PC-BSD will allow the selection of multiple desktops during installation. This article describes what changes were needed to allow for multiple desktop support and how you can help the PC-BSD project in this endeavour.

BSDs and Solaris on the Desktop. Are They Ready to Serve?
In this article the author is comparing the BSDs with Solaris use as a desktop in small office. Toy will find out how extensive hardware support they offer and which software you can use.

A Puffy In the Corporate Aquarium. Success Story: OpenBSD as an Enterprise Desktop
While OpenBSD is well known for its use in infrastructure services (MTA, DNS, firewall…) or appliances, this article will focus on a less known application: the use of OpenBSD as a Joe User Desktop.

Puffy the Hobbit. The Challenge of Porting GNOME 3 to OpenBSD
After a recent proposal from Lennart Poettering [1] for GNOME to include more Linux specific technologies like systemd (and basically become a Linux-based OS), I thought it would be interesting to show some of the challenges and constant battle that is to port this Desktop to BSD systems and more specifically OpenBSD.

GRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
By Rob Somerville

An Introduction to GIS on FreeBSD
Geographic information systems (GIS) are rapidly gaining popularity both commercially and on the Internet, and used with location aware devices such as mobile phones can be a powerful tool for aiding productivity. From this article you will learn how to install and initially configure Geoserver and PostGIS.

Using POSTGIS Tabular and Geographic Data with FreeBSD
In this article, the author will look at extending the GIS server to use PostGIS.

Manipulating Map Data Using QGIS
In this article, the author will examine how to create and manipulate shapefiles.

Using Openmaps Data with Geoserver
In this article the author explains how to import Openmaps data. Open Street Map (openstreetmap.org) is a treasure trove of worldwide street maps available under the Creative Commons licence.

A GIS Strategy for Web-enabled Business
In this final article in on GIS, the author looks at how to successfully manage and commission a complex GIS project.

TOOLS & MULTIMEDIA
By Ivan Ivanov, Sufyan Bin Uzayr, Juraj Sipos, Michael Bushkov, Robert Fekete, Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse

Introduction to Openssl: Command-line Tool
The article describes the command-line utility of openssl. It is a tool that supports encryption and decryption, message digests, key generation and exchange and ssl channel manipulations.

The Wonders of Blender
Blender is a powerful software, but can also be daunting, especially for BSD users, as the award-winning software isn’t yet officially favored on BSD. Fear not! Let’s explore this wonderful tool, starting with the user interface.

Converting a Physical Partition with FreeBSD to a VMware Image
Portability is something people increasingly value, because it has a number of advantages – you can, for example, carry your desktop (or server) anywhere with you and thus also all your very important personal data that you have created over some time, or perhaps over many years.

(Ab)using VideoLAN
From this article you will learn what you can do with your video and audio using powerful VideoLAN command line interface. Dealing with video and audio data is part of our everyday life. Sometimes, though, we need to do things that fall into “advanced” category. What tools should we use then?

Taking a Peek Under the Hood Without Compromising Security
LibGTop allows developers to peek under the hood of the kernel and export lots of system data in a convenient and easy to use library. From this article you will learn how to write simple applications (and scripts) with the library.

Extracting Useful Information From Log Messages
The syslog-ng application is a powerful and flexible system logging and log message processing tool to help the work of system administrators. This article highlights some of its newer and lesser-known capabilities.

DATA STORAGE WITH FREEBSD & NETBSD
By Martin Matuška, Juraj Sipos, Brivaldo Junior, Svetoslav Chukov, Sufyan Bin Uzayr

ZFS and FreeBSD
The Zettabyte Filesystem (ZFS) is one of the most advanced open source filesystems available today. Its design implements several revolutionary ideas with focus on data consistency, performance and ease of use.

mfsBSD the Swiss Army Knife for FreeBSD System Administrators
mfsBSD is a toolset to create small-sized but full-featured mfsroot based distributions of FreeBSD that store all files in memory (MFS) and load from hard drive, usb storage device, optical media or network.

How to Make a Memory File System in FreeBSD
Memory File System is a very good option for your own – customized FreeBSD system. Soon after FreeBSD CD (or USB) boots with MFS, it loads all the necessary files from the root directory in memory the same way as if these files were in the root directory on your hard disk.

Using FreeBSD to Authenticate Users with OpenLDAP and FreeRADIUS
In this article, the author describes how to introduce a WIFI authentication environment using 802.1X with a RADIUS server (FreeRADIUS), a central database (like OpenLDAP) to store user and password, and using MSCHAPv2 protocol to avoid third party supplicants.

Building an iSCSI Storage with BSD
Highly loaded databases need a fast and reliable storage solution, something like a big server with many hard drives, probably with 4, 8, or 16 drives. Also, many 1U servers do not have the necessary storage capacity to offer services that need it.

Benchmarking Different Kinds of Storage
In this article the author examines 2 types of storage: an iSCSI and a local hard drive. He describes all of tests with a specific set of hardware and software to illustrate performance.

Exploring the Powers of the Cloud. Deploying eyeOS on BSD
Ever thought of running things in the cloud? How about doing that from your own server, without any extra effort or cost? We take a look at eyeOS, a cloud OS, and as usual, we do so on BSD.

BSD & ALIX
By Bill Harris, Erwin Kooi

FreeBSD & ALIX. A Pint Sized Install of an Enterprise OS
Can FreeBSD be used successfully in the embedded device market? Which type of embedded devices work best for FreeBSD? How to install FreeBSD 8.2 on x86 based embedded SBC? How to determine which applications are best suited for embedded platforms? Read this article to find the replies on above questions.

NanoBSD & ALIX
In the previous article, Bill Harris described how to do a basic installation of FreeBSD on a PC-Engines ALIX board with a Compact Flash card. This is a great way to get started, but there are some risks to this approach. From this article you will learn about working of and working with NanoBSD and the process of creation of NanoBSD for an embedded system.

OPEN SOURCE CERTIFICATION
By Jim Brown

What it Takes Starting and Running an Open Source Certification Program
So you’re all excited about your new software and its amazing capabilities to change the world. You truly believe that if only more people knew about it and were competent at using it, the world (or at least the information technology world) would be revolutionized. You want it to succeed, but you know it won’t until more people use it and are truly good at it. Suddenly, there’s a flash of lightning…

INTERVIEW
By Anton Borisov & BSD Team

Interview with Dru Lavigne
Dru Lavigne is a network and systems administrator, IT instructor, author and international speaker. She has over a decade of experience administering and teaching Netware, Microsoft, Cisco, Checkpoint, SCO, Solaris, Linux and BSD systems. She is author of BSD Hacks, The Best of FreeBSD Basics, and The Definitive Guide to PC-BSD. As Director of Community Development for the PC-BSD Project, she leads the documentation team, assists new users, helps to find and fix bugs, and reaches out to the community to discover their needs. She is the former Managing Editor of the Open Source Business Resource, a founder and current Chair of the BSD Certification Group Inc. and serves on the Board of the FreeBSD Foundation. Read the interview and check, what responses she gave to our questions.