Ports installation custom kernel installation

[Ralph_Ellis]

I own an amd64 laptop with PC-BSD and when I would attempt to compile programs from source with the ports system, I would get a large number of crashes. As an experiment, I tried installing a custom kernel compiled for my machine (see the FreeBSD handbook) and my results now are much improved. I get the occasional crash on very large programs but my rate of difficulties had dropped by about 60%. If you are experiencing this type of problem, you may wish to explore this option.
Ralph Ellis

[Ralph_Ellis]

Just as a follow up, on my laptop the custom kernel install helped with compiling but it also lost my DVD writer drive so I switched back to the old kernel. As an experiment, I managed to install PC-BSD on my main desktop machine. It works exceptionally well there. Everything compiles with no crashes. I don't have the nvidia and audigy drivers working yet but BSD seems much more stable on my main desktop. This is closer to the experience that I had expected. Laptops are always kind of peculiar. It may also help that the desktop has 2gigs of memory instead of 1gig on the laptop.
Ralph Ellis

[antik]

Just as a follow up, on my laptop the custom kernel install helped with compiling but it also lost my DVD writer drive so I switched back to the old kernel. As an experiment, I managed to install PC-BSD on my main desktop machine. It works exceptionally well there. Everything compiles with no crashes. I don't have the nvidia and audigy drivers working yet but BSD seems much more stable on my main desktop. This is closer to the experience that I had expected. Laptops are always kind of peculiar. It may also help that the desktop has 2gigs of memory instead of 1gig on the laptop.
Ralph Ellis

Laptops is PITA to support due to proprietary motherboards and incompatible ACPI implementations.

[TerryP]

But when you can find that magic laptop that works 100% perfectly and kicks ass too, it's the sweetest thing you can get FreeBSD on.

No internal internet connection or card reader is the closest I've gotton, but I'm on a tight budget with few options for notebooks hehe.

[Ralph_Ellis]

I have heard good things about Thinkpads and compatibility with Linux and usually that carries over to BSD as well.
Ralph Ellis

[Apatewna]

I wonder if there are specific options in make.conf to allow compilation of 32bit code in 64bit nachine. This is my opinion on the subject but my google searches have come empty so far, not much time to search too :roll:

[DragnLord]

if you are using i386 sources, it compiles 32-bit by default