FreeBSD…
Hi Guys,
Tried to install FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE i386 and x86_64 with PRO.
Nice progress but still "Half Ready" product.
If you want bug report I will be happy to send.
Miki
Hey Miki,
Not yet. I’ll be tackling FreeBSD in another week or two, I believe. I’m in the midst of some issues on Fedora Core (PHP4+PHP5+FastCGI) right now, but expect that to wrap up in another day or so. After that Debian gets my full attention until the installer ships for it, and then FreeBSD follows on that. Each OS takes about a week of steady/dedicated effort to develop and test.
Joe,
No offense and I’m sure you guys are super busy, but I’ve been waiting for a FreeBSD release for a couple of months and that was back when it was said it would be a couple more weeks. I was surprised to find this recent post citing a couple of weeks again. I now know better than to get my hopes up, but maybe it be best not to quote time frames, especially considering Murphy’s Laws. Again, my intention is not to offend and I’m patiently waiting a quality release. I just wanted users like Miki to realize that these things can take longer than expected. A lesson I’ve learned the hard way.
Kaveh
Hey Kaveh,
No offense taken. I’m afraid I’ve never gotten the time frames right for any of the OS support milestones. It always takes so much longer than anticipated that I’m shocked, myself, in every single case.
It’s a bit embarassing to point out, but SUSE and Mandriva were both about two and four months overdue when they arrived, respectively. At this point FreeBSD is several months past due (because all of the others have been pushed back several times). It’s not a slight to FreeBSD that it’s late…it’s just the reality of how darned long it takes to get the installer working right and the packages built for each new platform. And, each new OS seems to be taking longer, because we’re getting new customers every day on the existing platforms and they demand attention…so my time for new platform work gets shorter every day. It’s become a weekend job now, where I have to force myself to ignore customer emails/support issues for most of those two days just to work on the things that add some sales (we get a sales spike every time I add a new platform, so I have a very strong interest in adding new platforms, but I somehow have to balance that with keeping existing customers well-cared for).
In other words, you’re right. I simply can’t seem to stick to a schedule on new OS support. The builds take a long time, the testing takes a long time, and the bugs are sometimes very ornery to fix (I seem to always run up against odd limitations or issues with the package management facilities in the OS in question when I finally do get all of the packages and such in place). And I have a full-time support job on my hands these days, with the existing supported platforms.
All just excuses, I know. But I’m trying to keep things moving in the right direction, and hopefully won’t piss off too many FreeBSD and Debian/Ubuntu users in the interim.
Do you have an updated timeframe for Freebsd?
Hey Wayne,
There’s pretty good news on the FreeBSD front: There are no other operating systems ahead of it in the support queue now. 
Debian/Ubuntu are mostly wrapped up now, and I’m building the x86_64 versions as we speak. I’ve got a FreeBSD development system running, and I’m wrapping my head around the ports system–I haven’t yet figured out if we can use ports for distributing our software, yet, but I’d like to if it’s possible (so far, I’ve managed to use native packages and native update management tools on all platforms except Red Hat Enterprise, where I had to revert to yum for updates).
Anyway, I’d guess another week or two and we’ll see the first release for FreeBSD. It’ll probably be buggy for a couple of weeks after that, as I find and fix problems.
Good thing I quit trying to by a hacker wannabe and left Slackware, eh Joe?
Heheheh…We might try to support Slackware at some point.
Slacks major failing for us (and for any server deployment) is the lack of package management. Jamie has written a Webmin-based package manager for just this kind of situation (Solaris will need it, as it also lacks reasonable package management), but it’s wholly untested and doesn’t really address the installation process…so I’d have to write a whole lot of new code to support Slack in the install.sh. As it is, I have huge amounts of work ahead of me to make install.sh more robust. It’s amazing how many folks expect us to be able to drop right into a heavily customized system without breaking anything and, seemingly more importantly, not reporting any errors due to the odd configuration and packages from unsupported sources!
But I would definitely recommend FreeBSD over Slack for a server deployment. Nothing against Slack, but FreeBSD is solid and very well-designed. Slack lacks a lot of the cohesive and clean design, as well as incredibly good documentation, that makes FreeBSD great, while also lacking the ease of use features that make Fedora and some of the other Linux distros more fun to use and easier than FreeBSD–the worst of both worlds, so to speak, for most situations.
I know Slack has its fans and for a desktop system that isn’t directly exposed to the internet, it’s just fine. But the time for server systems without good package management of any sort is, thankfully, behind us. FreeBSD only squeaks by with ports, but it does handle everything that you really must have on a server, so I can’t complain too much. It’s better than Solaris, Windows Server, and Mac OS X. And Slack. I would say it’s better than SUSE, but SUSE is finally getting it together with rug.
Joe,
I’ve been lurking on the forum for most of the year, eagerly awaiting the FreeBSD release. If you need any BETA testers I’d be glad to help. I’ll buy a license right now if you can tell me that FreeBSD is getting close.
thanks…
Steve
Yes, I too am awaiting to see a FreeBSD release - I have just upgraded my server and it was using a free early version of virtualmin, which I have not installed as yet - I am happy to purchase a licence this time.
Trouble is I need to configure some servers and want virtualmin. What is the latest version to support FreeBSD? Should I try to get that one now and upgrade?
Please let me know.
Dave
Virtualmin for FreeBSD is badly needed.
Is there any Releas date? or betas?
Bump.
So many nice new features. I’d love to try them out in FreeBSD. Is the conversion still in work or has it been shelved?
Hey Steve,
Definitely not shelved. Just a lot more work than anticipated…(As always with adding new operating systems.)
Joe,
I haven’t followed closely enough to remember… is it a reasonable possibility for me to get the Pro version working in a FreeBSD on my own? I saw a recent message from Tony implying he had some success. My experience level is successfully running 5 to 10 Webmin/VirtualMin servers for the past few years, but I’ve never been able to get LDAP working well.
By reasonable, maybe less than 10 hours effort? Or even better, is there a rough procedure posted somewhere I missed that would guide me?
thanks…
Steve
Hey Steve,
If you’ve got Virtualmin GPL running on your boxes, then the effort is almost zero. Just grab the new version of the module in wbm format from our repository using the serial number and license key as the username/password to login, and then install it. There’s actually a new “Upgrade to Virtualmin Professional” feature in Virtualmin GPL version 3.39 and above…which will work on any OS.
We’re keeping this on the down low, since it leaves off lots of the configuration stuff that we do automatically on a Professional system–hopefully to avoid anyone thinking they can just drop Webmin onto a box, install Virtualmin GPL (without doing all of the crap needed to make it work), and then upgrade to Virtualmin Professional, and expect it all to work. It’s a different beast going this route to a Virtualmin Professional system…primarily targeted at folks that know kinda what they’re doing. Most FreeBSD users seem to fall into that category.
If you’ve run Virtualmin GPL for years, then you’ll have no trouble running Professional. I would expect an hour or so from fresh OS install to working Virtualmin system, if you know exactly what you’re doing. As for LDAP, bring up the specifics here in the forums or on the Webmin mailing list, and we’ll see what we can do to help. I dunno that I recommend it, since it adds quite a bit of complexity without a lot of payoff in a virtual hosting environment (there are exceptions–like if you have a very few domains, but a whole heckuva lot of mailbox users…like thousands of them).
I hadn’t upgraded to the most recent version yet. I’ll try a new install, buy a copy of the PRO versionand try the upgrade.
thanks…
Steve
Joe,
Do you have a list of packages, versions and configurations options so that I can match your Pro baseline as closely as possible. Make things work better in the future when you release the FreeBSD version.
For example: apache 2.2, proftp, Dovecot, Spamassassin, ClamAssassin, webalizer, plus others…
thanks…
Steve
Hey Steve,
Versions don’t matter. We support all of 'em.
The tricky bits are primarily to do with mail, and default locations for things. So, I’ll cover that:
MTA is Postfix
MDA is procmail (all filtering happens via procmail rules on a per-user or per-domain basis, so it’s highly configurable)
Mail spools are Maildir in $HOME/Maildir
POP3/IMAP is Dovecot 1.0 (gotta be 1.0 because 0.99 doesn’t support group membership, so you can’t lock down the homes…in Virtualmin 3.39 and above, 750 is the default for home directories, and we recommend you configure your system to work around that, rather than changing it).
SMTP authentication is Cyrus saslauthd
Homes are /home/domainname (with sub-servers living in /home/domainname/domain/subservername)
User and group quotas enabled for /home
Hmmm…I think that’s the biggies. Everything else is probably easily adjustable and can be set to taste.
We have a standalone version of the setup script here:
http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/virtualmin-base-standalone.pl
This will not run successfully on FreeBSD (yet)! But it’ll give you a good idea of what we’re doing with our configuration steps. There’s a new version of virtualmin-base in QC now that’s going to do quite a bit of additional stuff, and adds a number of useful dependencies to the mix. But, core system-wise the above is all that matters–adding other modules and other packages it non-disruptive.
Miki - if you’re not opposed to paying for consulting, I can get either the GPL version or the Pro version up and running for you no problem. Just let me know if it’s a single box install, or if I’d be working with existing configs (ie, DNS servers scattered about, non-local services, special services, etc).
Also helps to have the latest FreeBSD, and have your ports tree current.
Just let me know! We’re running it here without issue.
Oh, btw - we use a slightly different config than Joe mentions, but using his config is no problem at all. On our systems we use Sendmail for SMTP and SASL2, saslauthd. IMAP we aren’t using anything right now, but Dovecott is simple enough. We’re intending to implement dbmail, but that’s besides the point. 
Oh, and we’re using Apache21.