Category: FreeBSD

Since I got my Mac some of my FreeBSD projects have been languishing on the back burner. Two are important, getting an IPSEC tunnel using IKE between FreeBSD (racoon) and OpenBSD (isakmpd frontended by ipsecctl) and getting WPA going. A couple of months ago I replaced WEP with wpa in my home wifi setup. There’s no arguing that the security is better and on the Mac it’s drop dead simple. I never understood what was going on in FreeBSD I understand it now. WPA appears to be divided into two parts like IKE. One part runs on the client and another in the Wireless AP. FreeBSD includes a program called wpa_supplicant which manages the WPA key exchange for you. To handle this it also has to manage the wireless interface. The automatic setup is actually pretty easy. I found this which helped me out. I wanted to understand what was going on under the hood. It turns out the setting up the config per the original article is the first step. Then run:

wpa_supplicant -B -Dbsd -iath0

as root. This handles the WPA negotiation. When ifconfig reports that you are connected you can run dhclient ath0 to connect.

I use FreeBSD for nearly anything that needs a server. It’s got quite a bit to offer. Anyone who actually knows FreeBSD knows that it’s dead simple keep up to date. I’ve used this basic technique for several years.  The steps are pretty simple and can be found here with additional instructions for dealing with multiple machines here.  I’ve pretty much followed this method for years including updating a machine located in a remote close with an NFS mounted /usr/{src,obj} over an IPSEC link. I recently added a new wrinkle that I think is pretty cool. My build box is an HP/Compaq DL360 with hardware RAID. I’ve pretty much standardized on this hardware. A client clued me into this simple technique. Long story short he had to move a data center from Chicago to CT and he chose to do it by stocking up on spare RAID drives. He cloned a server by pulling a working drive from a working server and replacing it with a spare. He shipped the pulled drive via courier to the new data center. Installed it in the correct slot on the same kind of server chassis booted the new clone up. At this point the clone server now saw it’s drive array missing the other drive. He was obviously mirroring. On insertion of the new drive the clone server hardware did an automatic rebuild. I apply the same technique to FreeBSD. I build a new server from the lastest snapshot then go through the source update process. Next I pull one of the drives and put the pull aside replacing it with a spare.  Et voila. Now I have a save point on that Drive. I can install it in the server alone an reboot. and I’m right at the point where I have built and installed the world and have just finished running mergemaster. This is an excellent starting point for building a fresh server.