Hello,

Sorry for my bad english but I'm from France.
I'm new with GhostBSD and *BSD in general and I have few questions before switching (from Windows) :

- If I install GhostBSD on a ZFS SSD, is it OK to move the swap partition to a UFS HDD ? is it OK to automount UFS partitions of this HDD using /etc/fstab ?

- How to completely disable/hide a disk drive (dedicated to Windows) like /dev/ada1 and its partitions ? I try to add hind.ata.1.disabled="1" to /boot/device.hints and to /boot/loader.conf but without success. [Edit : OK, I got it working. According to dmesg, the disk driver is ahcich and unit is 1 so I added hind.ahcich.1.disabled="1" to /boot/loader.conf ]

- I tried to add a "guest" account (not member of the wheel group) for internet browsing purpose. I had to create a ~/.xinitrc file to log in from SLiM. Once the user session is opened, there is no item in the menu to shutdown the PC. I had to close the session and use the halt keyword in SLiM. Is there another way to do it ? [Edit : OK, I got it working too. The account has to be a member of the operator group ]

- If using a "guest" account for my daily routine (web surfing, mail, etc...), will GhostBSD still display a notification when an update is available or do I have to log with my "admin" account (member of the wheel group) regularly to check for updates and install them ?

- Since 18.12, OctoPkg has been replaced by Software Station. I don't know why but I find it difficult to use the latter. It only display a brief description of a package when moving mouse over it. Is there a way to display more informations as the Info tab of OctoPkg did (version, size, etc...) ? Is it OK to use OctoPkg instead of Software Station ?

Thanks in advance

"Is it OK to use OctoPkg instead of Software Station ?"
Yes, it is. But I always recommend the cli and to use pkg.

Hello,

Thank you. The pkg utility is very useful.

I switched from Windows to GhostBSD 10 days ago and I was thinking of a way to share the issues I encountered as a newbie and the solutions I found. I don't know if a thread is a good idea but let's try.

My hardware configuration before :

• A 256GB SSD with 1 NTFS partition hosting Windows (let's call it ada1 now).

• A 2TB HDD with several NTFS partitions containing all my documents, images, videos (let's call it ada2 now)...

My Hardware configuration after :

• A new 256 GB SSD hosting GhostBSD (let's call it ada0 now).

• The 256GB SSD with 1 NTFS partition hosting Windows (ada1).

• The 2TB HDD cleared and now with several UFS slices containing all my documents, images, videos (ada2)...

The story :

• First I tried to install 18.10 and 18.12 with USB sticks. I don't know why but it never worked. The boot process failed for any reason. The CD is slow but works.

• I also encountered the drmn0 error (https://forums.ghostbsd.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=1161) after the 18.12 installation. I then installed 18.10 successfully.

• I wanted to hide my Windows SSD ada1 from GhostBSD. A useful utility is dmesg. It helped me identify the disk driver and its unit. To disable a device hind.<driver>;<unit>.disabled="1" has to be added to /boot/loader.conf.

• Next I wanted to dedicate a user for daily work (Internet browsing, watching videos, etc...) and keep the user created by the installer for administrative purpose (updates, configuration, etc...). A new user can be created with adduser but to be able to log on a copy of .xinitrc has to be created in its home directory and to be able to shutdown the computer it has to be a member of the operator group.

• Clock issue when dual booting with Windows : GhostBSD assumes CMOS clock is set in UTC and Windows assumes it is in local time (https://issues.ghostbsd.org/issues/11). There is a registry hack for Windows to make it work with UTC but the best solution is to make GhostBSD working with a local time CMOS clock. To do it I had to verify that the adjkerntz "domination" (sorry I prefer this word rather than the other d-word) is running and loaded at boot with the rc-update utility and then create the /etc/wall_cmos_clock file (touch /etc/wall_cmos_clock is enough).

• No audio output at all : This is a known issue especially with graphic card with HDMI output (https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/sound-setup.html). I had to determine the correct pcm unit using cat /dev/sndstat and then add hw.snd.default_unit=<unit> to /etc/sysctl.conf.

Hoping this will help somebody.