Trying to keep junky old computers going

[Weixiong]

Hi everybody,

I've been using PC-BSD on and off since the 7 series and know enough of the commands to get things done, but am not a *NIX expert. I've had .80 installed on an old GateWay PC with a 500MHz PIII for the past 5 years or so and it's ran great. I enjoyed using it more than Windows but the power source finally gave out on it a couple years ago and have been using Windows since.

I have an old GateWay laptop with a 1.2GHz CeleryOn and 256RAM running XP Home I've decided to turn into a PC-BSD build so I downloaded the USB Live and Full images onto an 8GB stick but neither of them worked on 2 different puters, using the same stick both times. My CD burner is on my PC so burning one isn't an option.

I do still have the CD I installed PC-BSD .80 with so decided to go with that just to get started. I just finished a successful build, am looking at my KDE desktop and going to see if all my hardware is being recognized and try to familiar myself with everything again.

I've got a 5 year old Sony Vaio running Vista that is in need of a reformat I may turn into a *NIX box too. The recovery disk I made for it aren't being recognized and the partition has been hosed so it's either that or buy a Windows OS.

I just wanted to say hi and am glad to be a part of the community again.

[Weixiong]

Here I am on my new PC-BSD box using my favorite browser, Konqueror, and couldn't be happier.

I had a small issue with some keys on the laptop keyboard being transposed but disabling the keylock option and rebooting fixed that. My soundcard and other hardware was rocognized from the start and the build went without a hitch.

The online update shows everything is up to date and that doesn't seem right though, beings as the disk I installed from was at least 5 years old...

[mooreted2000]

Cool, glad you got it going. Not sure if a 5 year old install still gets updates, you might want to try 9. I have it on an old Celeron using LXDE and it runs really well.

[Weixiong]

I would try 9 if I could and already outlined why I had to go the route I did using the old distro. I'm going to buy another USB stick today and try downloading another copy of the iso in hopes it was just a bad stick.

It's been a couple years since I've used UNIX and am a little rusty to say the least but I seem to be having n00b problems. I can't get the PBI's I downloaded to run by clicking on them, through the run command or the terminal as a user or as root. It shows the busy icon for about 10 seconds and doesn't proceed.

I prefer using ports and had to muddle through differnt commands before I got the right one but have the initial ports collection downloading now.

[mooreted2000]

Not sure why the USB image isn't working. I downloaded the img then used dd to create the bootable thumbdrive.

dd if=pcbsd.img of=/dev/sdb

On a Linux box.

[Weixiong]

I used Win32DiskImager to write the img on my Vista machine. I tried the Live and Full img on 2 different laptops, and yes, I did go intothe BIOS and set it so they would boot from USB. It won't read the stick on either WIndows machine from Explorer and says it need to be formatted. I did use the same stick both times though.


Right now I'm trying to figue out why I'm having so much trouble getting started using ports. When I attempt to install something I keep getting a "/sbin/sha256: not found" error, even when I tried installing sha-1.0.4 from ports.

I got the vulnerability-test-ports thingy installed but it's been so long I'm having trouble remembering how things are done.

[mooreted2000]

Are you updating the ports before trying to compile?

portsnap fetch update

[Weixiong]

I wish it was that easy. Portsnap doesn't seem to have been included in the ports download:

PCBSD# cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portsnap
/usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portsnap: No such file or directory.


This is what I get when trying to install portmanager:

PCBSD# cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portmanager
PCBSD# make install clean
===> License check disabled, port has not defined LICENSE
===> Found saved configuration for portmanager-0.4.1_9
=> portmanager-0.4.1.tar.gz doesn't seem to exist in /usr/ports/distfiles/.
=> Attempting to fetch http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/pro...r-0.4.1.tar.gz
portmanager-0.4.1.tar.gz 100% of 480 kB 54 kBps
===> Extracting for portmanager-0.4.1_9
/sbin/sha256: not found
*** Error code 127

Stop in /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portmanager.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portmanager.


I don't know what I'm doing wrong or what I need to do to get going.

[Weixiong]

I bought another USB stick and got a good 9.0 Full img burned onto it, but this laptop only has 256 RAM and I got a warning message about 9.0 needing 512 RAM or it could experience problems.

My PC only had 256 RAM and ran 8.0 without any problems so I'll probably have to stay with this older distro.

[mooreted2000]

Hmmm, bummer. I don't what the deal is with your port tree.

I think 9 would work if you use lxde.

Check the FreeBSD handbook about ports. Maybe there's something in there that would help.