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Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

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Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#161

Post by Gud »

npodbielski wrote: post #41

Thought I agree with points of an author saying that it is wasteful to run 10 SQLs to run ten applications, I am not SYS admin and I do not want to spend few hours every week upgrading my software. With docker you do 'docker compose pull; docker compose up' and you done. You can do that via cron in every dir with your compose file and you are done. In fact I think even that thing is still to complicated. We need one-…

What makes you think you have to spend "a few hours every week" to keep a FreeBSD setup up and running?

I have pretty much every server running from web server to mail server and I don't spend "a few hours" per YEAR to keep it running. about once a week I run a pkg update, pkg upgrade and service x reload in each jail to update the software and 99.9% of the time it works smoothly.It really doesn't get much simpler than that. This could also be done with cron like in your example, but I don't think automating updates is such a great idea. I think updates should be monitored.

I have a lot of confidence in the nginx/postfix/dovecot/etc developers ability to develop professional software.

FWIW I am also not a sysadmin.

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#162

Post by Gud »

csdvrx wrote: post #13

The main complain of the author seems to be that linux use systemd. In my experience, systemd is far better and more reliable than anything else, especially if you need complex logic (ex: when this and that happen, start doing this, except when such and such are present) Most of the problems I've seen come from trying to duplicate systemd functions: in the author example, why bother with rsyslog or network-manager? I…

What tools are missing from FreeBSD?

Regarding your example with "eth0:0" Is not how you do things in FreeBSD. There is no "eth0" at all.

You use ifconfig xy0 alias. https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ifconfig&apropos=0...

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#163

Post by zie »

SoftTalker wrote: post #152
tomxor wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used ZFS on Debian in production for 8 years, yet to experience rough edges but always interested to learn.

My experience with ZFS (over 10 years ago now) was awful. Still have a bad taste in my mouth though no doubt it's much improved today.

Sounds like maybe you were holding it wrong? This is year 20 for ZFS in production.

Though Linux support a decade ago with ZFS was pretty rough around the edges. That's not true anymore for many distros of Linux.

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#164

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

fragmede wrote: post #108
n3storm wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have "reversed engineered" dockerfiles in order to avoid containers. Any software should be installable without docker, it just takes more knowledge and time. Also sometimes it doesn't, there is a binary (like with go and rust and .net) or other times the long route is pip or apt and some conf fiddling. Databases are the worse part maybe but once you get it is more control for you and what you want to do with your…

that is absolutely fascinating. why do you want to avoid containers?

As someone who does use containers: It depends™ on how you do things, but lots of containers are used as a way to consume mystery meat easily. Who made that image? What's in it? Do you trust the binaries in it? How often does it get updates? Are you keeping up with updates that are available? All of these are solvable, of course, but a lot of containers are "just docker run randomsource/whatever:latest and never think about it again".

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#165

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

0x457 wrote: post #35
asveikau wrote: post #9

ZFS is probably the biggest reason for me. I have a machine with a zfs pool running samba and nfsd. Philosophically I tend to prefer *BSDs over Linux. I have a few FreeBSD machines, one OpenBSD, and one Linux.

> ZFS is probably the biggest reason for me. Maybe in the past there was an argument for that, but ever since FreeBSD started using OpenZFS implementation...what's the difference? My ideal OS would be something like NixOS, but on FreeBSD and with better language than Nix.

> My ideal OS would be something like NixOS, but on FreeBSD and with better language than Nix.

Something nicer than nix would be nice, but otherwise perhaps keep an eye on https://github.com/nixos-bsd/nixbsd

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#166

Post by throwaway2037 »

rollcat wrote: post #24

I have mixed feelings about FreeBSD. Some stuff is genuinely good: major/minor release branches, the best ZFS experience you can get OOB, actual man pages, overall a lot "cleaner" than most Linux distros. OTOH when you compare it to e.g. OpenBSD (or in many instances, even Linux), it's an actual mess. The default install leaves you browsing thru the handbook to get simple things to work; it has three ( three !) disti…

    > actual man pages
What is wrong with Linux man pages?

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#167

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

sgarland wrote: post #118
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But no, it's not really ok when your servers have an average lifetime of 30 days. It's very hard to offer a stable service on an unstable substrate. The whole cattle mindset because at the end of the day everything is a "unstable substrate" your building a stable service on unstable blocks pets don't solve the issue that each pet is fundamentally unstable and your just pretending it's not.

I’ve had Linux servers with > 1 year of uptime. I’ve seen much, much higher. It’s entirely possible to have a stable foundation; it’s modern software that’s hot garbage, and relies on ephemerality to stay running.

...right, yes, servers. I've certainly never accidentally forgotten to reboot a laptop on cheap commodity hardware for a few months. Slightly more than a few months. Look, it got rebooted eventually, okay?

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#168

Post by avhception »

solid_fuel wrote: post #126

I use FreeBSD for my home server and I have for years. For me, the biggest reason is just the stability from a user perspective. I don't mean system stability, although it has been rock solid, I mean the stability in terms of administration - the tools don't change frequently. `ifconfig` just works, like it has worked for 20 years. On my linux servers, it's all swallowed into `ip addr` now. I don't mind that, I certa…

This is one of the reasons I run FreeBSD as well, I wanted to get away from the ever-changing Docker, docker-compose, docker compose and all that stuff.

The jail system has it's warts and at times can seem a little unpolished, but alt least I know that the workarounds and automation I have set up for my home server is mostly "done".

Re: Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

#170

Post by uggedal »

xedrac wrote: post #141
jonathanoliver wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian is fat?? I always thought it was a nice, minimalist server distro.

It's definitely fatter than Arch because packages tend to be more coupled.

This is entirely false and the opposite is true. Debian has much more granular package splitting and less hard dependencies.
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