Breadth First
No
Ethernet
No Modem
RedHat Again
Installing my firewall OS was the work of about three days. Okay, my laptop had a corrupted hard disk, and I was reinstalling on it, too; that certainly slowed me down.
Breadth First
The main thing that slowed me down, though, was that I broke the cardinal rules of OS installation: proceed methodically, and RTFM. In particular, whenever I encountered a perplexing problem, my first response was to repeat my installation attempt with a different OS.
Then again, maybe that's a sensible approach; I was trying to determine which OS was most "agreeable", where "agreeable" is a loose term meaning, "doesn't give me undue hassles." A breadth-first search of the options makes sense. And yes, that introduces a natural bias toward Linux, since I'm already very familiar with it. So what? Nobody forced me to look at BSD in the first place!
To make a long story short, I ended up walking through the installation procedure using all four OSs, about twice per OS (actually four or five times with OpenBSD, and once with RedHat). In each case, I mounted the installation media on my desktop, prepared a boot disk as per instructions, and attempted a network install (FTP for the BSDs, HTTP for RedHat).
No Ethernet
The first problem I encountered was that none of the installation utilities could find my ethernet card, a 3Com Etherlink II. Following the protocol already described, I promptly switched to another OS and repeated my test, cycling through every one but RedHat (I knew that RedHat would detect the card just fine; I'd used it before with RedHat 5.2).
Since I didn't proceed methodically, I had falsely convinced myself that OpenBSD once detected the ethernet card, but then failed on subsequent attempts. That bit of stupidity caused me to loop through the OSs for an extra pass. It also unfairly eliminated FreeBSD and NetBSD from the running, because I had the incorrect notion that OpenBSD had distinguished itself in the first elimination heat.
Thoroughly frustrated, and determined to make BSD work before resorting to Linux, I pulled the computer apart and yanked the Ethernet card, planning to lay out the $16.00 for a new one. First, though, I took a rare break to RTFM. I checked DejaNews for any reports of trouble with the Etherlink II. Bingo! The BSDs don't like using DMA with that card. Rejumper, disable DMA, and try again.
No modem
This time, OpenBSD installed without a hitch. Thinking my troubles were over, I started getting familiar with OpenBSD, and setting up the firewall. After installing qmail, I started setting up PPP. Doh! OpenBSD didn't detect my modem.
Then I took another rare RTFM break. Okay, first I recompiled the kernel, setting any likely-looking options. Then I scanned the boot messages for anything that seemed relevant. Then I rebooted a few times, and then I pulled my modem card and stared at it. No jumpers. No brand name--your basic bargain-basement Plug-n-Play modem.
Then I took an RTFM break. Theo De Raadt posted advice for just such a problem (in which he simply quoted the isapnp manpage). He suggested adding a line to the isapnpdevs file in the kernel source, and recompiling. All my symptoms matched his post: this was obviously the solution I wanted. Delighted, I proceeded to carry out his instructions.
No soap. I tried again, several times. Then I posted my problems to usenet. There still hasn't been a reply, as of a week later.
RedHat Again
After three days of trying, I turned to RedHat 6.1. Fatigue had set in so badly that I was unwilling to fight anymore. Seemingly, my selection of obsolete and cheap hardware had stumped the BSDs.
The RedHat install went exactly as expected. Their new GUI installer was neat, if you like that sort of thing. I went through a basic install, including development tools, excluding X-windows, TeX, toys and games.
In defense of the BSDs, my modem troubles weren't over. When I got to setting up PPP, RedHat didn't detect the modem either! That came as a surprise. For a while I alternated between reading the fine manual, and flailing at the problem with randomly chosen experiments. Then came a happy accident: when probing the serial port with setserial, I accidentally set the UART type to 16550. That did it! Apparently, the serial driver incorrectly identified the UART as a 16450, which caused the modem to fail.
The question, of course, is whether I can set the UART type under the BSDs. If so, then I'll have another go at OpenBSD.
