Do’s and Don’ts (Common Gotchas)

Every operating system has numerous pitfalls ready to snare the unwary. These pitfalls can be particularly dangerous when the system is newly installed or when the administrator is new to FreeBSD. This section lists some of the most commonly made errors and some of the most valuable pointers for effective FreeBSD administration.

DO:

  • Do use the ports and packages to install software. It’s possible to grab the source for a particular program directly from the developer and compile it using its built-in scripts, but that just risks polluting your core-system userland if the program’s installer doesn’t know about FreeBSD’s filesystem structure. If the program isn’t available as a port, post to the freebsd-ports@freebsd.org ...

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