Rhyous

FreeBSD

FreeBSD
There are two easy ways on FreeBSD:

From Ports

You can install easily from Ports. Make sure your ports tree is up to date:

$

su

Password:

ServerName# ServerName# ServerName#

portsnap fetch portsnap extract portsnap udpate

Then just do this to install MySQL on FreeBSD.

ServerName# ServerName#

cd /usr/ports/databases/mysql51-server make install

Or if you want to use utf8 by default, run this command:

ServerName#

make WITH_CHARSET=utf8 install

MySQL 5.1 Server (and MySQL 5.1 client) will download, compile, and install automagically for you.

From Packages

You can also install easily as a binary package with this simple command.

ServerName#

pkg_add -r mysql51-server

Make sure to secure you MySQL installation.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-security-excerpt/5.1/en/default-privileges.html

Red Hat
Using RPM

You have to go to the MySQL site and download the MySQL 5.1 server RPM and install it.
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/

It does not automatically install the MySQL client, you have to download that as a separate RPM and install it.

Using yum

Since I didn’t have a MySQL license, yum didn’t work, so I don’t know if it can be installed using yum.

Make sure to secure you MySQL installation.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-security-excerpt/5.1/en/default-privileges.html

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How to create a UTF-8 Unicode Database on MySQL?

I am not going to cover installing, I have done that here:
How to install MySQL on FreeBSD 7.2 or on Red Hat 5.4?

So when you open MySQL using the command line MySQL client, you can see what Character Set your server is configured to use with this command:

show variables like 'character_set_server';

Often the default is Latin-1. I wish UTF-8 was the default but it is not.

You can see the language your database is created with by using this command:

show create database dbname

Again, usually the default is Latin-1 and again, I wish the default were UTF-8 but it is not.

So how do I make my MySQL database UTF-8?
How do I make UTF-8 the default?

I am going to find out…

Ok, so I have MySQL installed on two different platforms:
FreeBSD 7.2 x64.
Red Hat 5.4 x64.

My question are these:
What level do you set the Unicode setting at? Install instance, database, or column type.

MySQL – Looks like it can be configured globally in the my.cnf or it can be database specific.

To configure globally

Add the following to the my.cnf file:

[mysqld]
init_connect=’SET collation_connection = utf8_general_ci’
init_connect=’SET NAMES utf8′
default-character-set=utf8
character-set-server=utf8
collation-server=utf8_general_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake

Note: There are other options for collation besides utf8_general_ci such as utf8_unicode_ci. See this article:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/charset-unicode-sets.html

Do I have to create the database in a special way?

Not if you configure the setting globally. However, if you don’t configure unicode support globally then yes you have to create your database in a specific way.

I found this post that is for an applications that uses a MySQL Unicode database. I don’t care about the application, just the MySQL data.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/create-database.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/charset-applications.html

So the syntax will be:

CREATE DATABASE mydb   DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 DEFAULT COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

Do I have to compile differently to get unicode support?

I didn’t have to recompile on either FreeBSD or Red Hat.

Is there differences for each platform?

Slight differences.

FreeBSD

FreeBSD has the MySQL client as a dependency so it gets installed with the server with out any extra work.

The Database folder is /var/db/mysql.

For the global configuration there is not a my.cnf file created by default.

FreeBSD has example my.cnf files located here:

/usr/local/share/mysql
/usr/local/share/mysql/my-huge.cnf
/usr/local/share/mysql/my-innodb-heavy-4G.cnf
/usr/local/share/mysql/my-large.cnf
/usr/local/share/mysql/my-medium.cnf
/usr/local/share/mysql/my-small.cnf

You can create your own my.cnf or you can copy one of the examples.

In order to get the my.cnf to work, you should copy it and change the owner and add the [mysqld] settings.

# # # ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? #

cp /usr/local/share/mysql/my-medium.cnf /var/db/mysql/my.cnf chown mysql:mysql /var/db/mysql/my.cnf cat << EOF >> /var/db/mysql/my.cnf [mysqld] init_connect=’SET collation_connection = utf8_general_ci’ init_connect=’SET NAMES utf8′ default-character-set=utf8 character-set-server=utf8 collation-server=utf8_general_ci skip-character-set-client-handshake EOF

Red Hat

Red Hat does not have the MySQL client installed with the server, you have to download a separate RPM and install it. But it is really easy. Download both RPMs and install them.

The Database folder is /var/lib/mysql.

For the global configuration there is not a my.cnf file created by default.

Red Hat has example my.cnf files located here:

/usr/share/mysql
/usr/share/mysql/my-huge.cnf
/usr/share/mysql/my-innodb-heavy-4G.cnf
/usr/share/mysql/my-large.cnf
/usr/share/mysql/my-medium.cnf
/usr/share/mysql/my-small.cnf

Same as FreeBSD, there isn’t one used by default and you have to copy one and use it.
You can create your own my.cnf or you can copy one of the examples.

In order to get the my.cnf to work, you should copy it and change the owner and add the [mysqld] settings.

# # # ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? #

cp /usr/share/mysql/my-medium.cnf /var/lib/mysql/my.cnf chown mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql/my.cnf cat << EOF >> /var/lib/mysql/my.cnf [mysqld] init_connect=’SET collation_connection = utf8_general_ci’ init_connect=’SET NAMES utf8′ default-character-set=utf8 character-set-server=utf8 collation-server=utf8_general_ci skip-character-set-client-handshake EOF

Copyright ® Rhyous.com – Linking to this article is allowed without permission and as many as ten lines of this article can be used along with this link. Any other use of this article is allowed only by permission of Rhyous.com.

See the updated version here:
How to install FreeBSD 9

I do this:

1. Download the DVD.
1. Go to www.freebsd.org
2. Click the yellow Get FreeBSD Now button
3. Under your appropriate processor type (in my case it is usually i386 or amd64) click ISO.
4. I download the DVD ISO. (You can download a bunch of CD ISOs if you want.)

Note: There is also a boot only, which can download fast because it is small. I often use this option because of the way I install. However, it doesn’t have the install files, instead it just has the boot files. Once you get booted, it downloads the options you have chosen to install from FreeBSD’s website or a mirror. So while the download is faster, the install may take longer. However, if you are doing a minimal install, which I usually do, it could be faster than waiting for an entire DVD to download since the DVD includes a lot of data your won’t be using for a minimal install.

2. Burn the ISO to disk. I am not going to explain how to do this but I will say this:
   Please make sure you don’t burn the ISO as a file on the disk, but instead you burn choose the option to burn a disk from the ISO.
3. Boot from DVD.
1. Put the DVD (or CD) in your drive.
2. Turn on your system or if it is on, reboot it.
3. Make sure you BIOS is configured to allow you to boot off the DVD or CD drive.
4. Choose to boot from the DVD or CD drive.
4. The first “gui-like screen you will see is the Country Selection screen. Choose your Country using the up and down arrows on your keyboard to highlight your country. Once your country is highlighted, hit Enter to choose OK.
5. The next screen is the Main Menu. Again, use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to highlight Standard. Once Standard is highlighted, hit Enter to Select it.
6. The following screen is an informational message. Read it if you like and hit enter to choose OK.
7. The next screen appears like a DOS screen. It is asking how much of the disk you want to dedicate to FreeBSD. Dual-booting is actaully not common anymore because of virtualization such as VMWare, so I assume you are using the entire disk.

   Press “A” on the keyboard to select the Use Entire Disk option and then press “Q” to Finish.

8. The next screen asks if you want a boot Manager. A boot manager is mostly likely used for dual booting, so choose Standard and hit enter.
9. The following screen is a second informational message. Read it if you like and hit enter to choose OK.
10. The next screen appears like a DOS screen and looks very similar to the previous DOS-like screen you saw, however it is not asking how much of the disk you are going to use for FreeBSD; instead, it is asking what partitions you want and how much space you want to allocate to each partition.

    Press “A” on the keyboard to select the Auto Defaults option and then press “Q” to Finish.

11. The next screen is the Choose Distributions screen. So let’s choose your distributions.
1. Use the down arrow to scroll all the way down to Custom and hit Enter. This brings up the “Select the distributions you wish to install” screen.
2. Select base and hit Enter
3. Select kernels and hit Enter and another screen appears.
   1. Select the GENERIC kernel and hit enter. This checks the box but does not continue.
   2. Press Tab to get the cursor over the OK button and hit enter. This takes you back to the “Select the distributions you wish to install” screen.
4. Select games.

   You may want to skip this because you are thinking, this is my server, I don’t want games. But if you are reading this, then you are not a FreeBSD guru and you are problably a newbie. The “games” option includes simple command line only games and does not take up much space. The important thing is that it includes the feature where every time you log in, you get a nice tip. You can escape your newbie-ness by paying attention to these tips, so just select games already.

5. Select man
6. Press Tab to move the cursor over OK.
7. Before hitting Enter, look at it one more time and make sure you have selected these options: base, kernels, games, man.

   Yes if you are NOT a newbie select whatever you want.

8. Hit enter. This take you back to the Choose Distributions screen
12. Just like the last screen, press Tab to move the cursor over OK and click enter.
13. The next options is the Choose Installation Media screen. If you downloaded the CD or DVD, select CD/DVD (which is highligted by default) so just press enter.

    I am assuming you downloaded the DVD here. Screens may differ in order slightly if you used the Boot Only CD but you should be able to figure it out.

14. The next screen is the User Confirmation Requested screen. Up until this point, nothing has been done to your system. You drive is untouched.

    Press Enter to choose Yes and install FreeBSD.

    The drive is formatted, configured to boot to FreeBSD, the partitions are created, and the base, kernels, games, man distributions are installed.

15. The following screen is another informational message that tells you, “Congratulations! You now have FreeBSD installed on your system”. Read it if you like and hit enter to choose OK.

Now you are at the Post-installation configuration screens. You will be asked a lot of questions, most of which you will say “No” too.

16. Would you like to configure any Ethernet or SLIP/PPP network deices:

    Choose Yes.

    This opens the Network Interface screen.

1. Select your Ethernet card and hit Enter. The card name is not always the same.
2. Do you want to try IPv6 configuration of the interface?

   Choose No. (Maybe someday soon you will choose Yes here.)

3. Do you want to try DHCP configuration of the interface?

   Choose No. (If you are not building a server then maybe you want DHCP but if you aren’t building a server, you should probably be installing PC-BSD.)

   The Network Configuration screen opens.

4. Under Host enter you host name.
5. Under Domain enter you domain name.
6. Under IPv4 Gateway enter you default gateway’s IP address.
7. Under Name server enter the DNS server’s IP address.
8. Under IPv4 address enter the machine’s IP address.
9. Under Netmask enter the subnet mask.
10. Choose OK.
17. Do you want the machine to function as a network gateway?

    Choose No.

18. Do you want to configure inetd and the network services it provides?

    Choose No.

19. Do you want to enable ssh login?

    Choose Yes.

20. Do you want to have anonymous FTP access to this machine?

    Choose No.

21. Do you want to configure this machine as an NFS server?

    Choose Yes.

22. Do you want to configure this machine as an NFS client?

    Choose No.

23. Would you like to customize your system console settings?

    Choose No.

24. Would you like to set the machine’s time zone now?

    Choose Yes.

25. Is this machine’s CMOS clock set to UTC?

    Choose No (unless you know that it is).

26. Select a region.
27. Select a Country.
28. Select a time zone.
29. Does the abreviation ‘MST’ look reasonable? (Your time zone acronym may be different.)

    Choose Yes.

30. Would you like to enable Linux binary compatibility?

    Choose No.

31. Does this system have a PS2, Serial, or bus mouse?

    Choose No if you have a USB mouse. Choose Yes if you have a PS2 mouse. (Usually a mouse that is not USB is uncommon these days, however, there are still plenty of PS2 mice around.)

32. The FreeBSD package collection is a collection of thousands of ready to run applications, from text editors to games to WEB servers and more. Would you like to browse the collection now?

    Choose No.

33. Would you like to add any initial user accounts to this system?

    Choose Yes.

    The User and Group Management screen appears.

34. Select User and press Enter.

    The Add a new user screen appears.

1. Under Login ID enter the user name.
2. Leave the UID unchanged. By default is is 1001.
3. Leave the Group field blank.
4. Enter a password.
5. Enter your full name.
6. Under Member groups enter this group: wheel
7. Leave the Home directory as is: /home/username
8. Leave the Login shell as is: /bin/sh
9. Tab to OK and press Enter.

   You are returned to the User and Group Management screen.

35. Select Exit and press Enter.
36. Now you must enter the systems management password.
    This is the password you’ll use to log in as root.

    Press Enter.

37. Enter the new password.
38. Retype the new password.
39. Visit the general configuration menu for a chance to set any last options?

    You are returned to the sysinstall Main Menu.

40. Tab to Exit Install and press Enter.
41. Are you sure you wish to exit?

    Choose Yes. (Make sure to remove the bootable disk from the CD or DVD drive.

Your system will now reboot and FreeBSD should boot up.

Now check out my post about the updating FreeBSD.
What are the first commands I run after installing FreeBSD

This will tell you how to apply FreeBSD updates/patches and how to load the ports tree.

Copyright ® Rhyous.com – Linking to this article is allowed without permission and as many as ten lines of this article can be used along with this link. Any other use of this article is allowed only by permission of Rhyous.com.

I have an article depending on the version you are trying to install

• How to install FreeBSD 9?

• How to install FreeBSD 8? (or earlier)

I also have aarticles for dual-booting.

• Dual-booting Windows 7 and PC-BSD

Ok, so you just installed FreeBSD, an maybe you are not familiar with it, so you think, “What now?”.

Well, think about what you do when you install any platform. You do three things:

1. Apply patches/updates.
2. Install software
3. Post-installation configuration of system and software

For example, when you install a new windows operating system, it is common to go to Windows Update and update your server. Then you install software such as microsoft office, etc… The same for servers. You update the server, then maybe you add your server software. Then you configure it some more.

The order may vary for every install or you may even do this three step process multiple times.

Just because you are on FreeBSD does not mean the same three step process doesn’t apply. This three item process is operating system independent. It is the first thing I do on FreeBSD as well.

So here are the first commands that I run after logging into a new FreeBSD install.

Same commands in a nice script/code box you can use to copy and paste.

freebsd-update fetch
freebsd-update install
portsnap fetch
portsnap extract

Let me explain what each command does:

1. freebsd-update fetch – This download patches that have been released for the version of FreeBSD you have installed. It does not install the patches.
2. freebsd-update install – This command installs the patches that were previously download.
3. portsnap fetch – This download a compressed version of the ports tree. Ports means applications that have been ported or developed to compile and run on FreeBSD. So the ports tree is basically a database of available software that can be install on FreeBSD.
4. portsnap extract – This extracts the compressed version of the ports tree.

So with these four commands you have your system updated/patched. You also have all the software that is available ready to be installed.

Update 1:

I am not sure why i didn’t know this before, but you can combine each pair of commands into one command:

freebsd-update fetch install
portsnap fetch extract

Stay tuned for my article on searching the ports tree.

Update 2:

As you can read in the comments, it is good to know that you only have to “extract” the ports tree once and for every subsequent update to the ports tree, you should only run it with the “update” command as shown.

portsnap fetch update

So Windows 7 has been around in Release To Manufacturer (RTM) for since August 14, 2009.

Many have been using it in production since then. In fact, many have been using in Production since it was still in beta/release candidate form.

I have been using it for 1 month.

Quick Opinion
It is so much better than Vista and XP that it would take a novel to describe all the ways it is better. Most of them are simple things.

Anyway, please post comments on how long you have been using Windows 7 and why you like it.

Ok, so I couldn’t get Cisco’s VPN client to work for Windows 7 64 bit. So I went in search of another VPN solution that would be more compatible.

(UPDATE: I got ShrewSoft’s VPN Client working, so keep reading down below.)

I came across ShrewSoft’s VPN Client a while ago, but it originally blue screened my Windows 7 box, but it was a version that didn’t support Windows 7. However they have a new version that is out that is for Windows 7 64 bit. Actually they now have a release version on their download site but there is a beta of the next version (Update 3/05/2010)2.1.6-beta-6 that your may want to use (or a later version if you are reading this well after I wrote or updated it). See the comments on why.

I installed it and it requested a reboot so I rebooted, and the first good news is that I didn’t blue screen when my workstation booted up. Horray!!!

After installing, I tested undocking my laptop from its docking station and then docking my laptop, and again, no blue screens, so I think it is good to go. Now I just have to figure out how to configure it to connect here at work.

I like the license, they say:

Stay tuned for more testing….

Ok…I am back for more notes.

At work we are using a Cisco VPN solution, so it turns out that when my Cisco VPN would install on a 32 bit machine, it used a .pcf file. Well, guess what is awesome about ShrewSoft’s VPN Client? It can import a .pcf file.

I imported the .pcf file and I appear to connect, then disconnect. Not sure what is going on. I am at work, but I should be able to connect to the VPN while at work, at least that is what my IT staff said.

So hopefully it connects when I am at home.

Here is my log:

I will try to debug later…

All right I am back again and I am trying to debug. I found this post:
http://lists.shrew.net/pipermail/vpn-help/2009-October/002282.html

There is a program under Start | All Programs | Shrew Soft VPN Client called “Trace Utility” that is installed with the Shrew Soft VPN Client can be used for debugging. However, it wouldn’t work for me. The buttons weren’t enabled.

I had to right-click on the “Trace Utility” shortcut and choose “Run as administrator” then I was able to turn on debugging.

Positives for Shrew Soft VPN Client
– It has a debugging utility.
– It supports Windows 7 64 bit
– It imports cisco .pcf files.
– There is a lot of documentation.

Negatives for Shrew Soft VPN Client
– I don’t have it working yet
– There is not really any clear failure reason for a user.

So I will keep at it. I think I am about going to email the developer, but I sure don’t want to bug him.

Hopefully for some of you, it worked first time for you when you imported the .pcf file.

Got it working

Another positive. The developer has a mailing list, as you saw with one of my links above. I found this link:
http://lists.shrew.net/pipermail/vpn-help/2009-October/002275.html

The key piece of information I needed was this:

In the tool, after importing my .pcf file, I only had to make one configuration change. I had to change the PFS setting to “group 2”. See this screen shot.

So I have this working now.

I have to say that I am very impressed with Shrew Soft. It took me some time to figure it out, but it works. Now the only question time will tell is how stable it is. Expect an update in a week or two about whether I think the Shrew Soft VPN Client is stable.

The steps are easy for me to connect to my VPN at work. Now every VPN is different so I am sorry if these steps don’t work for you:

1. Use the correct (and latest) version: 2.1.6-beta-6 or later
2. Install Shrew Soft VPN Client
3. Reboot.
4. Import the .pcf file.
5. Modify the configuration and change the PFS setting to “group 2”.
6. Apply the configuration.
7. Click connect.
8. Enter your domain user and password and you will connect.

Success!!!!

Also, I exported my configuration as a Shrew Soft VPN Client export, which is a .VPN file. When I import it, I don’t have to make a configuration change like I did with the Cisco .pcf file.

Key words: cisco vpn window 7 64 bit