Linux

This article on the IBM Developer site has a history of shell evolution. It isn’t anything novel, but the nice family tree diagram and comparison of scripts in different shells are illuminating. They don’t discuss zsh. The zsh FAQ outlines a brief history of that shell. In that FAQ, zsh is described as closest to the Korn shell (ksh). There are also some options to make zsh act like other shells like CSH_JUNKIE that makes it more compatible with csh.

One thing that I’ve noticed and appreciated about FreeBSD is that it is a monolithic project. In Linux, you have the kernel and then all of the user space stuff that is part of a distribution. Sometimes, it just seems strange to have these different parts being updated with one command. FreeBSD does it differently. freebsd-update fetch gets the updates for the OS and pkg update gets them for the installed packages.

Another interesting problem cropped up in my quest to install BSD. The presence of a RAID adapter in my server that presents the disks as a virtual disk. Based on some research, it seems that ZFS doesn’t do well unless the adapter can use Initiator Target (IT) mode which presents each disk individually to the operating system. Since ZFS seems to be the way to go for a modern FreeBSD installation, I would like to use it.

I updated my desktop to Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS the other day. Although everything seemed fine, I was unable to get the system to suspend. Both from the command line (systemctl suspend) and the GUI, it would blank the screen and log me off but not suspend. Since it used to work, that was definitely something to do with the upgrade. After searching around a bit based on the logged messages, I found a somewhat related bug.

I received my used eero and switch to set up a network connection for my to-be BSD server. Adding the eero to my existing network was easy. It did require a reset of the new-to-me eero and then an update of the entire network to the latest software version which took a few minutes. After that, I shutdown the Raspberry Pi I had setup the other day and put the eero in its place.

It was time to upgrade to the latest LTS version of Ubuntu on my desktop. I had thought about doing it six months ago, but I don’t need the leading edge functionality and there is always a chance something goes awry. The upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS from 20.04 was quick and uneventful. I haven’t fully tested everything, but the apps I consistently use (Firefox, Evolution and Joplin) were fine after re-entering my credentials.

As part of the project to install BSD on a server, I’ve been using the iDRAC 7 command line in my Dell 620 server to manage it via the Raspberry Pi I set up to the other day as plugging in a monitor and keyboard is not that convenient. However, since I hadn’t touched it in a very long time, the SSL certificate for the iDRAC had expired. /admin1-> racadm sslcertview -t 1 -A 01 US Texas Round Rock Dell Inc.

I pulled the server out of storage, put it in my office, plugged it in and connected a network cable to the iDRAC port. Based on the work yesterday, I was able to get connected and was able to start the server up. It’s running Ubuntu 20.04 now and i ran apt update && apt upgrade to patch it and make sure the network connection is stable to the Internet. The throughput isn’t great, but it worked.

As I wrote yesterday, I want to install BSD on a unused Dell server that I’ve got. Before I could get started with that, I had a problem. That problem was getting the server onto my network. It doesn’t have a WiFi card and I’m not sure how well BSD would work with a USB network interface. Since the eero is upstairs, that meant setting up a WiFi to Ethernet bridge.

An article about the boring reliability of BSD in The Register has me intrigued. I don’t have experience working with BSD but I like the concept of an operating system that limits the drama. A quiet backwater where things actually work sounds great. This is not a knock on Linux. Linux is popular for good reason and there are flavors of Linux that appeal to the “move slowly and don’t break things” philosophy in BSD with other distros aiming towards the bleeding edge.