BSD Cafe Billboard

Gentlefolk,

I am returning to BSD. It has been a wee while since I set up and administered BSD systems, but I did put in quite a few years before I gave up. I am definitely looking forward to getting off Linux. My first use case is to replace our server, a 15 year old Mac Mini that once ran OSX Server and then Debian.

Rather than make an ill-informed choice and then pester everyone with frustrating questions, I am hoping to solicit a bit of advice. I am hoping to get a used server and use jails to run various services.

Would a used Dell R640 with the H730p hardware raid card and a 2xSFP+ 10G card be an easy FreeBSD install? My sense from looking at posts elsewhere is that many people run FreeBSD on these, but I might be about to make a Well Known Mistake. It will be inside our router and firewall, so I'm not so worried about a hardened install.

Anything from raucous laughter followed by informative snorts through to gentle hints gratefully appreciated...

Many thanks!

---WBTD.

Ah, okay. It's a known bug. I was doing everything right.

I don't have a way to recompile so I'll have to wait until 5.1-release. https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=291461

Gentlefolk,

I brought myself back up to speed on FreeBSD by installing it on a T430 - ZFS and pkg install worked beautifully. Got Wayfire working, set up a jail to run a Luanti (Minetest) server. So far so good.

Now I'm working on the real challenge, bringing up a Poweredge R540 which will have raid-3 ZFS and many jails. And my first problem is right at the very beginning. I can install FreeBSD (15.0) from a USB stick just fine, but when I try to get the machine to boot...

(1) If I configure the 540 to boot from UEFI it cannot find the boot disk.
(2) If I configure the 540 to boot from BIOS, it finds the disk and boots just fine.

The Handbook is perhaps a bit out of date on this as it assumes BIOS, with a nod towards the possibility of UEFI. I'm guessing this problem has been solved many times over - could someone point me towards the solution?

Many thanks,

---WBTD.

Gentlefolk,

I am trying to set up a wireguard client inside a Bastille jail - both the host and the jail are on FreeBSD 15.1.

I have encountered an error (SIOCIFCREATE2 (wg0): Invalid argument) when I try to bring up the interface.

Apparently this is because, while the host system has access to the kernel module that enables wireguard, the jail does not.

After a bit of research, it seems that the way to handle this is to put the declaration
if_wg_load="YES"
into /boot/loader.conf, or perhaps into a file inside /boot/loader.conf.d.

However, Bastille sets up /boot as a read-only filesystem.

Hence the only way I can see to fix this is to edit the fstab for this jail and change the flags for /boot to rw from ro, restart the jail, edit the necessary files, and then go back out to the host and reset the flags in fstab.

Now, call me an optimist, but I suspect the good folks behind Bastille will already have seen this problem and worked out a less awkward solution - I just can't find it anywhere. Am I missing something?

Many thanks as ever,

---WBTD.

...and at long last: it wasn't a bug, it wasn't bad documentation, it wasn't BSD's fault in any way. The 540 in the 12+2 configuration has 12 drive slots on the front and 2 on the rear. Turns out that something, I have no idea what, means that while a SATA drive is recognised for boot (with UEFI) in the rear 2 plane, a SAS drive is not. It's a Weird Hardware Thing, and not something FreeBSD or the excellent handbook could, or should, ever have known about.

Now I'm off sorting out VNET jails to run Nextcloud.