[Soekris] FreeBSD or Linux

[Farid Hajji]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2004 at 03:24:28PM -0600, jdanda at sunflower.com wrote:
> What is the footprint of a base freeBSD install?

Hi,

I'm running FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE on a net4801 with
thttpd, postfix, cyrus-imap, bind and a few more daemons.
The box is used as a packet filtering ADSL router as well
for a small LAN.

Here's what top says right now:

last pid: 27773;  load averages:  0.00,  0.02,  0.00    up 3+21:49:25  16:20:45
31 processes:  1 running, 30 sleeping
CPU states:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.8% system,  0.0% interrupt, 99.2% idle
Mem: 39M Active, 23M Inact, 35M Wired, 22M Buf, 24M Free
Swap: 2048M Total, 116K Used, 2048M Free

With this setup, the box is mostly idle (thttpd is VERY efficient
CPU-wise), and 128 MB RAM is more than enough to avoid paging
to disk most of the time. 266 MHz is also enough for pf, snort etc...

As for ease of use: it's a complete FreeBSD release, because I'm
using a 2.5" harddrive. With enough patience, you could even compile
on the net4801 itself; though I'm running buildworld on a faster
machine and transfer everything to the Soekris before installworld.

All in all, net4801 is powerful enough for most needs; including
running some Linux distro or {Free,Open,Net}BSD.

Which OS you choose is entirely up to you. Just pick the one you're
most comfortable with, and enjoy!

> Does the term embedded mean anything more? (Retoric, but leads to next 
> question) Is the embedded movement within linux a factor in choosing an OS 
> for the 48xx boards? Is there an embedded movement for freeBSD?

Well, I'm not sure that the term embedded would be applicable to 48xx
boards. They are more like complete x86 PCs, with keyboard and VGA
circuitery and most PCI slots ripped out ;-).

> Thanks!
> Jim

Regards,
-Farid.