Grandpa returning to UNIX

fossiili · November 3, 2018, 7:30am

On the late 1960s I got short hands on experience with a russian "small" computer. It vas a copy of DEC's VAX ... and running some version of BSD-Unix. After that I worked in a university following the development of computing. After retire I started collecting old pc's and installing Linux-distributions to them. I like using terminal to do simple tasks as for ex. uppdating programs.

Now in the LINUX MAGAZINE March 2018 I found a dvd containing NetBSD 7.1.1. wich I installed or tried to do that. Everything seemed to go well except that while trying to get connected to Internet using 4G-wireles the installer did not find the DNS-server. Anycase I was able to login to the terminal. And I know that advice can be foundd, for ex.NetBSD Documentation.

But some questions are still open in my mind. There are still some strategic questions. What about some other variants of BSD as Free- Open- PC-

What would you recommend for a grandpa age 84

Neo · November 3, 2018, 11:50am

You could learn to program with Vue.js and jQuery and help us develop some new features for the unix and linux forums

hicksd8 · November 3, 2018, 12:05pm

The installer not finding (or configuring) a DNS server is no big deal.

The DNS server(s) address should be configured in

/etc/resolv.conf

You can edit that file (or create it if it doesn't exist) and put the ip address of your desired DNS server in there.

A directive "nameserver" plus single ip address will suffice, on the first and only line in the file, fully left justified.

For example to use Google's DNS server which is at 8.8.8.8 simply edit your resolv.conf to be like this:

nameserver 8.8.8.8

and reboot your box.

EDIT: Original post was technically incorrect, edited post to correct my mistake.

jlliagre · November 3, 2018, 5:50pm

Hmm, on the late sixties, there was no Unix yet and no VAX either. That might be the late seventies where early BSDs were indeed running on the first VAXen...

dodona · November 4, 2018, 2:18am

thats true. Something wrong with the posting.

fossiili · November 4, 2018, 4:57am

Thank you for correcting my memories! I'm glad to notice that here are some other persons old enough to remember those days

------ Post updated at 11:57 AM ------

I have an other computer connected to Internet. I tried Ifconfig:

[root@localhost ukki]# ifconfig
enp0s31f6: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.1.100  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        inet6 fe80::7285:c2ff:fe49:7fb1  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 70:85:c2:49:7f:b1  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 5222  bytes 3579646 (3.4 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 5014  bytes 675106 (659.2 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 16  memory 0xdf000000-df020000  

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 6  bytes 498 (498.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 6  bytes 498 (498.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

[root@localhost ukki]#

Is there some terminal command to see the address of DNS Server?

Neo · November 4, 2018, 6:01am

cat /etc/resolv.conf

vbe · November 4, 2018, 10:51am

I may be wrong but here in europe, most configurations give the home router as name server, which seems to me quite normal as your provider should resolve at the beginning to get out to the wild no?

hicksd8 · November 4, 2018, 11:42am

@vbe......no, you are not wrong. Routers get their external ip address from the internet service provider along with DNS service information. When the client requests ip address from the router which commonly also acts as the LAN DHCP server, the router also provides the DNS information to the client also.

In my previous post#3 I was simply looking to "quick fix" a missing DNS configuration but, in practice, on many modern distributions, resolv.conf is redundant in so far as there are often network management software packages that dynamically amend resolv.conf so that the sysadmin is not directly in control of resolv.conf content. Other software on the system may change the content automatically.

fossiili · November 4, 2018, 12:15pm

Thank you!

But is it dynamic ..

A bit later I try installing Net BSD 7.1 again. Or the version 8.0.

hicksd8 · November 4, 2018, 2:06pm

By "dynamic" I mean that information received from a router (acting as the local DHCP server) may include DNS server ip addresses (for your local ISP) which a network manangement package might insert into your /etc/resolv.conf without you knowing. Therefore when you

# cat /etc/resolv.conf

you may see addresses that you didn't expect.

But by "dynamic" I don't mean that it changes continuously, no.

Obviously, in this type of configuration, the router#s ip address is configured as the "gateway" and also the DHCP server. Without that the client has no chance of being fed DNS information.

bakunin · November 4, 2018, 2:33pm

Actually you are both somewhat right: the consumer WLAN routers get their IP address via DHCP from the internet service provider. In the DHCP protocol there are so-called "option fields" to transmit certain kinds of information - the IP address itself being the main and most important one. Other option fields tell the client the default route and - among other things - also the DNS server (in DHCPv4 this is option field 6, see RFC1395, BOOTP Vendor Information Extensions). It is possible for the client to ignore some or all of these, but per default the information is used to configure the IP stack of the client in several respects, including but not limited to the DNS server.

DHCP is explicitly not intended to configure routers, but it is done nonetheless by ISPs. When their (usually riddled with a "user-friendly", aka "crippled" firmware) routers get configured that way they pass on this information to their (WLAN-) clients. I don't know about the situation in other continents but this is how it is done all over in Europe.

It is usually a good idea to NOT use the DNS of the ISP at all and hand-pick a DNS server of your own choice for several reasons:

First, this is a good place to find out more about you and which hosts you contact. The ISP can get that information analysing your IP packets too, true, but this way you dont even need to contact a server to make them aware that you are interested in it.

Second, the DNS servers at least with Germanies ISPs are greatly hacked. IP addresses they don't want you to see are resolved not to their IP addresses but to "127.0.0.1". Some of these hacks have legal background (the German authorities think this is "internet security" and order that to prevent traffic to these sites), some hacks simply express the ISPs opinion that "we don't want our customers to go there". For many years i.e. a certain porn site was known to be "masked" this way by Vodaphone. Now, i don't care that much about porn sites but i like to decide myself if a site is worthy of my attention or not. (corollary: if someone you despise gets treated unfairly you should object as well - chances are the next one treated the same way may be you) Especially when the ones deciding upon masking or not an IP address is are a secret body (in earnest - in Germany this is decided secretly and expressly foregoing due process. But don't worry! Its all in the name of freedom and democracy.) instead of a public court.

I use 3 DNS servers. The first two are operated by UncensoredDNS, a Danish ISP who operates also this public DNS servers. The third one is cloudflare, but even though i appreciate their "no logs, no ads" policy it is there only as a backup:

91.239.100.100
89.233.43.71
1.1.1.1

I hope this helps.

bakunin

fossiili · November 12, 2018, 4:49am

Thank you! Now I have proceeded in installing NetBSD ver. 7.1.1. It's connected with Internet

I also know that the next step is by editing the files .profile and .shrc. But there is already the version 8 available so I downloaded
NetBSD64boot.iso and NetBSD-8.0-i386-install.img.gz. I have a really old IBM NetVista pc and it will suit well for terminal work.
So I need some usb-dongle and
cp in=NetBSD-8.0-i386-install.img out=/dev/....
As much as I remember it must in Linux be like /dev/sdc in a computer with two hard disks but where then

[root@localhost ukki]# ls /dev
autofs           hugepages/          ptp0     sdb1      tty24  tty49    usb/
block/           initctl@            pts/     sdb2      tty25  tty5     userio
bsg/             input/              ram0     shm/      tty26  tty50    vcs
btrfs-control    kmem                ram1     snapshot  tty27  tty51    vcs1
bus/             kmsg                ram10    snd/      tty28  tty52    vcs12
cdrom@           kvm                 ram11    sr0       tty29  tty53    vcs2
cdrw@            lcd2                ram12    stderr@   tty3   tty54    vcs3
char/            lightnvm/           ram13    stdin@    tty30  tty55    vcs4
console          log@                ram14    stdout@   tty31  tty56    vcs5
core@            loop-control        ram15    tty       tty32  tty57    vcs6
cpu/             mapper/             ram2     tty0      tty33  tty58    vcsa
cpu_dma_latency  mei0                ram3     tty1      tty34  tty59    vcsa1
cuse             mem                 ram4     tty10     tty35  tty6     vcsa12
disk/            memory_bandwidth    ram5     tty11     tty36  tty60    vcsa2
dri/             mqueue/             ram6     tty12     tty37  tty61    vcsa3
dvd@             net/                ram7     tty13     tty38  tty62    vcsa4
dvdrw@           network_latency     ram8     tty14     tty39  tty63    vcsa5
fb0              network_throughput  ram9     tty15     tty4   tty7     vcsa6
fd@              null                random   tty16     tty40  tty8     vfio/
full             nvidia0             resume@  tty17     tty41  tty9     vga_arbiter
fuse             nvidiactl           rtc@     tty18     tty42  ttyS0    vhci
gpmctl=          nvram               rtc0     tty19     tty43  ttyS1    vhost-net
hidraw0          pktcdvd/            sda      tty2      tty44  ttyS2    vhost-vsock
hidraw1          port                sda1     tty20     tty45  ttyS3    watchdog
hidraw2          ppp                 sda2     tty21     tty46  uhid     watchdog0
hidraw3          psaux               sda5     tty22     tty47  uinput   zero
hpet             ptmx                sdb      tty23     tty48  urandom
[root@localhost ukki]#

fossiili · November 14, 2018, 3:58am

Oh no ... It was not the command cp the one I recollected. It must have been dd