UbuntuBSD, Unix for human beings | Hacker News Reader

UbuntuBSD, Unix for human beings

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7 pointsblorgle4 comments

> The best part of using the FreeBSD kernel is that you'll end up using the famous Z File System, [...] with a separate UFS partition for /boot. As expected, ZFS support is completely integrated into the ubuntuBSD operating system.

It's not really "complete" to not put the boot volume onto ZFS, too. Having a separate /boot volume formatted as UFS was state of the art for FreeBSD some while ago. But things have changed since.

PC-BSD nowadays puts all volumes onto ZFS, the root dataset (which includes /boot) included. The bootstrap loader has been augmented to support loading the kernel from a ZFS volume. The PC-BSD installer only creates ZFS volumes, moreover.

* http://web.pcbsd.org/doc-archive/10.2/html/install.html#zfs-...

* https://blog.pcbsd.org/2013/06/pc-bsd-status-update/

Having /boot in the same single dataset as / makes "boot environments" easier, as switching amongst boot environments is just a matter of changing the root dataset.

Ironically, there's less of a hurdle for "UbuntuBSD" copying this than one might think. PC-BSD 10.2 uses GRUB's loader mechanisms for Debian/kFreeBSD.

* https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/a-closer-look-at-the-changes-...

My 2c is that this seems like an interesting project, but at some point lots of important Ubuntu packages (especially daemons) will be rolling out with systemd unit files and so on, it will be a lot of work to maintain BSD init scripts. It doesn't seem like it will be so simple as running Ubuntu userland on the FreeBSD kernel.

One option is to adopt Nosh as the init system, as it can digest systemd unit files.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwa...

The point where packages are rolling out with systemd unit files has already come and passed. The first rule of migrating to systemd has applied since last year, at least; to Ubuntu as to everyone else.

* http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/sy...

* http://askubuntu.com/a/626858/43344

* http://askubuntu.com/a/707750/43344

Of course, it is not a lot of work to maintain NetBSD/FreeBSD rc scripts, in the majority of cases. They don't look like System 5 rc scripts at all.

* http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/etc/rc.d/...

But you're making an unfounded assumption that because UbuntuBSD uses the FreeBSD kernel, it will use the NetBSD/FreeBSD rc system. This is not the case for Debian/kFreeBSD and I would be very surprised were it the case for this, which is apparently an "Ubuntu/kFreeBSD" (as it were). Debian/kFreeBSD uses the Linux System 5 rc system, which is very much not "BSD init scripts". This will very probably use that, too. So the fact that NetBSD/FreeBSD rc scripts are a lot better organized than the Linux System 5 rc scripts that one finds on Debian is scant comfort.

What might give more comfort is that there's no reason that nosh couldn't run on UbuntuBSD. It can take systemd service/socket units and convert them to native service bundles, which can be used on FreeBSD under nosh service management.

* http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwa...

It would be interesting to try.

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