A Quick Start on DragonFly

Justin Sherrill

<[mailto:justin@shiningsilence.com justin@shiningsilence.com]>

August 30, 2004

This document covers a number of first steps to take with a newly installed DragonFly system. It assumes some experience with a command line, and moves quickly. Much of this information is covered in further depth in the Handbook; the minimum is presented here for the benefit of readers who are already familiar with the material, or just impatient.

1 Keeping up to date

cvsup, which is included in the base system, is used to copy fresh source code and up-to-date ports to your system. cvsup uses a configuration file to determine what to download. A number of example files are stored in /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ and will be used here.

1.1 Pulling in userland and kernel sources

In order to keep the operating system up to date, you need to pull down the source code you want to compile and install. This includes the userland and kernel source code. On the default of install of DragonFly, these sources are not installed. The source code for the userland and kernel are typically stored in /usr/src/.

To keep up-to-date source in /usr/src/: 

# cvsup -h DRAGONFLY-MIRROR /usr/share/examples/cvsup/DragonFly-src-supfile
'

DragonFly-src-supfile' is a configuration file for cvsup that will get the latest version of the source code and put it in /usr/src. There are more example configuration files in /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ and you can also create your own. The latest version is only recommended for development; production systems should run the most recent release of DragonFly. For production systems, choose a particular release tag, such as 'DragonFly-release1_6-supfile' tag.

1.2 Updating the operating system

If your system is relatively quiescent, you can do this: 

# cd /usr/src && make buildworld && make buildkernel
# make installkernel && make installworld && make upgrade
# reboot
If a build step fails, wait a short while and update using

cvsup. DragonFly is under heavy development, and while it has remained remarkably stable, it is possible someone was in the middle of a commit while the source on disk was downloaded. If it does not work on a second try, report it to bugs. When sending a question to

bugs, please describe what you were doing at the time the error happened, and include the error data. If your problem gets solved, please post a followup message to

bugs explaining what the fix was; this will help others in the future who encounter the same problem, or people looking to fix unresolved problem reports.

If you have other programs running or users on your computer, it may be a good idea to reboot to single-user mode before running the installkernel or installworld targets, as the installation process removes and reads system software. If you have a custom kernel config file in

/usr/src/sys/i386/conf, replace make buildkernel and make installkernel with make buildkernel KERNCONF=KERNELNAME and make installkernel KERNCONF=KERNELNAME, where KERNELNAME is the name of that configuration file.

Once a full buildworld/kernel has been done, 'quickkernel' and 'quickworld' can be used instead for quicker results. Drop back to buildworld/installworld if the 'quick' targets cause errors.

2 Installing software

As of 1.4,

DragonFly uses the NetBSD Packages Collection (pkgsrc) for third-party software.

To install pkgsrc (You must be root to do this): 

# cd /usr
    # cvs -d anoncvs@anoncvs.us.netbsd.org:/cvsroot co pkgsrc

# cd /usr/pkgsrc/misc/screen
    # bmake install clean

# pkg_add URL

3 Getting to a Desktop

The two major requirements to get a "desktop" computer is installing Xorg, and installing a window environment.

3.1 Xorg

The easiest way to get Xorg installed is to add the package: 

# pkg_add ftp://packages.stura.uni-rostock.de/pkgsrc-current/DragonFly/DEVELOPMENT/i386/All/xorg.tgz
It is possible, as

root, to have Xorg probe your hardware, after installation, and build a suitable configuration file for your machine. 

# Xorg -configure > xorg.conf.new

It's also possible to use the programs xorgcfg or xorgconfig to generate a configuration file. xorgcfg is graphical, and autoconfigures itself for display. If it has trouble displaying, try it with the '-textmode' argument. As a final option, xorgonfig is a text program that will attempt to display choices for building a working configuration. Both require some knowledge of the hardware located inside the computer. It may be useful to know the video card chipset and the hsync and vsync of the monitor being used.

Once the XF86Config.new file is created, try starting XFree86 with that as the config file. 

# XFree86 -config xorg.conf.new
Assuming all goes well, this will place you in a minimal environment, using the program twm for layout. You'll see several xterms on the screen, from which

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace will exit you back out. If everything does not go well - the screen goes blank, or is garbled - Ctrl-Alt-Backspace will end your session and you can modify the config file (see man Xorg) and check the log from Xorg's startup in /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

Once the configuration file is working satisfactorily, copy it to a location where Xorg will be able to see it by default. 

# mkdir /etc/X11 (if it doesn't already exist)
# cp xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

3.2 Environment

The easiest way to have a usable desktop environment is to install one of the major desktop environments - KDE or Gnome. 

# pkg_add ftp://packages.stura.uni-rostock.de/pkgsrc-current/DragonFly/DEVELOPMENT/i386/All/kde.tgz

or 

# pkg_add ftp://packages.stura.uni-rostock.de/pkgsrc-current/DragonFly/DEVELOPMENT/i386/All/gnome

To enable KDE after installing, put 'startkde' into a file called .xinitrc in your home directory. Typing "startx" after that point (assuming you have X Windows installed and configured) will get you a graphical desktop. 

# echo "startkde" > ~/.xinitrc

A similar procedure can enable the Gnome Desktop instead. 

# echo "gnome-session" > ~/.xinitrc

4 Other resources

Contact the Documentation mailing list for comments, suggestions and questions about this document.

A_Quick_Start_on_DragonFly (last edited 2008-01-28 04:17:14 by localhost)